[gentoo-qa] QA subproject, TreeCleaners

[Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org>]

I propose a new QA subproject, the TreeCleaners.

This is a delicate subject for some developers, other developers don't 
care, and yet others want the cruft in the tree removed.  The Tree 
Cleaning project's main goal is to identify broken and unmaintained 
packages in the tree and either get them fixed or mask and remove them.

Criteria:
1.  Packages slated for removal must have no active maintainer.  This is 
accomplished by looking in the package's metadata.xml for the maintainer 
tag.  The maintainer tag must contain an active (non-retired) developer 
or team.  The tree cleaners will maintain a list of ebuilds assigned to 
maintainer-needed; this list may end up on the web similar to Debian's 
WNPP[1].  A package with missing metadata.xml is assumed to be unmaintained.

2.  Packages slated for removal must have open bugs filled against them. 
  It is not the policy of the QA team nor this subproject to remove 
packages because they have no maintainer.  There are plenty of 
completely working packages in the tree with no maintainer; we are not 
trying to remove those.

3.  Packages slated for removal with simple to fix bugs may be fixed by 
the tree cleaners if a project member elects to do so.  Many of the bugs 
are relatively minor ( depend fixes, revbumps, etc ) and could be done 
by someone given a bit of time.  This isn't meant as a means to 
perpetually keep crap in the tree, moreso that in some cases minor bugs 
against a package are not grounds for removal.

4.  Preferably packages slated for removal shall have a dead or 
unresponsive upstream.  An upstream that isn't interested in maintenance 
means more work for Gentoo in keeping the package up to date.  For 
packages that already lack a maintainer in Gentoo, a dead upstream means 
there is no developer and no upstream for a package; aka no one to do 
the work.  A dead upstream is not *required* however, crap ebuilds for 
packages with an active upstream are still valid to be removed if there 
are major bugs filed against them.

5.  Packages slated for removal shall have a last rites e-mail sent to 
the gentoo-dev mailing list.  There will be no packages disappearing 
randomly out of the tree due to the tree cleaner project members. 
Transparency is key here, both on bugs, in package.mask, and on the 
mailing list.  developers and users both need to know what is going on.

6.  Packages slated for removal shall have a 30 day period in 
package.mask prior to removal.  This is tree cleaner policy, and it's 
one that I hope other developers will adopt.  I've seen things pmasked 
and removed after a week, a "couple of days", or just pmasked and never 
removed.  The 30 day period allows everyone using the package to see the 
masking message and the corresponding bug when they use portage.

Questions and Comments are welcome, as always.

-Alec Warner

[1] http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
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