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On Sat, Mar 23, 2019 at 11:26 AM Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote: |
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> On Sat, Mar 23, 2019 at 10:17 AM Alec Warner <antarus@g.o> wrote: |
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> > |
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> > |
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> > Avoid letting the perfect be the enemy of the good here. |
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> |
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> Indeed, we need to avoid treating packages as unmaintained simply |
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> because they have open bugs. |
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> |
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> Many packages have bugs that are fairly trivial in nature, or build |
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> issues that only show up in fairly obscure configurations. These |
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> often affect only a single user. |
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> |
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> If we treeclean the package we don't actually fix the problem - we |
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> just drive it to an overlay. Now instead of a package that works for |
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> 11/12 users and has an obscure but, we now have a package that isn't |
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> getting monitored for security issues, and other QA issues that might |
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> actually be fixed if they were pointed out. |
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> |
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> > Rules: |
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> > A package is unmaintained if it: |
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> > - Has not been touched in 5 years |
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> |
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> Do we really want to bump packages just for the sake of saying that |
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> they've been touched? That seems a bit much. |
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> |
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> > - Is behind 3 versions AND hasn't been touched in 2 years |
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> |
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> If we have the ability to detect if a package is behind upstream, |
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> perhaps we should actually file bugs about this so that the maintainer |
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> is aware. |
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> |
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This is part of the idea behind my plan to have open bugs be the first (but |
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probably not only, as the later phases demonstrate) symptom of trouble. |
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Apart from it not being fair to remove teh package unless it's actually |
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broken, it's also a good habit imo to encourage bugs (as long as they're |
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not frivolous) to be filed simply for documentation purposes. |
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However, the fact that a newer version exists doesn't necessarily mean |
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> that there is a problem with the older version. For some types of |
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> software a maintainer might be picky about what updates they accept. |
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> For example, they might need to synchronize versions with other |
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> distros that update less often/etc. They should of course accept |
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> contributions from others willing to test, but the fact that somebody |
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> is maintaining a package on Gentoo doesn't obligate them to always |
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> support the latest version of that package. |
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> |
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> Now, obviously if there is a security issue/etc then we should follow |
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> the existing security policies, but those are already established. |
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> |
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> -- |
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> Rich |
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> |
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> |
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