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On 01/12/2010 01:30 PM, Markos Chandras wrote: |
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> IMHO ( this is not a treecleaners@ opinion, i m just talking for my |
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> self ), announcing and masking a package is a good way to inform and wake up |
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> everybody to take care of this package if they really really want to stay on |
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> portage. |
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I agree with the announce part, and the THREAT of masking. I just don't |
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think that the masking should happen at the same time as the announcement. |
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> Having open bugs for months isn't a way to let everybody know that this |
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> package is broken for long time, so it is a valid candidate for removal? |
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> Should we send that via e-mail as well? |
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I don't think an open bug constitutes notice. It is valid notice to the |
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maintainer of the package, but not to the larger community. |
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I probably have 100-200 packages installed, and I'd probably be annoyed |
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if any of them went away (I'm still missing kdirstat, but that isn't |
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really the kde team's fault). If an important one was about to go away |
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I might step in to maintain it, and I'm sure a lot of other people feel |
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the same way. At the same time, I can't monitor the bugs on 100-200 |
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packages - that is the reason for having a maintainer. |
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I think the concern is that some maintainers don't respond in a timely |
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manner. Now, I don't know that maintainers have an obligation to fix |
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every bug within a certain timeframe - some packages are problematic and |
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I'm not sure that we should discard a 98% solution in favor of a 0% one |
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because we don't have a 100% one. However, serious issues should be in |
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scope for treecleaners, but the first goal should be to find a |
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maintainer, and only if that fails should we consider masking. |
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Also - if a maintainer can't be found we might also try to coordinate |
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with the Sunrise folks to see if they're willing to take it over. |
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We should also solicit proxy-maintainers among the user community when |
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we announce pending removals. That could be very helpful with something |
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like inn: I use it VERY lightly and I'm not a news guru, but I am a |
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dev. I bet we have users who are news gurus and who care about inn, but |
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they aren't Gentoo devs. Together we could probably cover the gaps and |
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I'm sure devs would be more willing to pick up a package if they knew |
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they had some help with the nuances of the package itself. If that |
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falls apart later, at least an active dev is assigned to the package, |
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and they can always decide to try to find a new maintainer or kill the |
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package (saving treecleaners the work of doing so). |
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In short - treecleaners should be about getting packages back into the |
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mainstream maintenance model, with removal being the fallback option if |
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that doesn't work. They shouldn't have to go out of their way to do |
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this, but an advance announcement and some coordination is probably a |
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good idea. |
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|
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Rich |