Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2013-09-10

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 11:22 AM, Jack Morgan <jmorgan@g.o> wrote:
> As I mentioned in the -dev ML, I don't think this is the right approach
> to your concern. There should be a clear definition of what is  expected
> from an arch that is offically supported by Gentoo Linux. By offically
> supportd I mean ARCH/stable keyworded. If an arch fails to meet those
> requirements, then "demote" it to ~arch only status. This should be a
> GLEP. Otherwise, you are asking others to base their decision on someones
> perception.

That seems like a reasonable question for the council to address.

Personally my sense is that if a package has a STABLEREQ pending for
60 days maintainers should be able to drop the stable version of the
package at their discretion.  This really should be a max though.  If
this is happening with any regularity then the arch should be dropped
from stable keywords, unless some other arrangement is made (like
@system-only stable - an arrangement with its own pros and cons).

It probably makes sense for those calls to be made by the Council
unless the arch project lead agrees.

> If keywording an ARCH is a real concern, then Gentoo Linux should have
> a long hard look as what it wants to support as a developer community. I
> want to challange the council to take this as an opportunity to define
> this. If developer resources are limited, then Gentoo Linux can't
> support everything it has in the portage tree.
>

Developer resources would be limited even if we had a paid staff of
20k developers.

Unmaintained packages do get treecleaned.  However, the issue here is
with arch maintenance, not package maintenance.  It isn't the
responsibility of package maintainers to do arch testing, though many
choose to do so with the agreement of the appropriate arch projects.

Rich