Package removals and the BTS
Hi all,
I was looking for old posts, because I was sure that this must have
been discussed before, but I could not find any.
When a package removal is requested, there is a bug filed against
ftp.debian.org. Following procedures, the maintainer should also know
about it (either filing it himself or being contacted about
it). However, for other people browsing the BTS, and for orphaned
packages, it would be much nicer if there was a bug filed against the
package itself, or some remark on bugs.debian.org/package that its
removal is requested. There could be several ways to achieve this.
- Always file two bugs for removal, one against the package and the
other one against ftp.debian.org. This requires no modification in any
of the tools involved and could be recommended in the developers'
reference.
- The BTS is made aware of this, e.g. by having it possible to file a
bug against two packages at once. Alternatively, there could be some
special pseudo-header for bugs against ftp.debian.org. The second
alternative is probably ugly and should be avoided.
- The QA pages are made aware of this. This would probably require
some standardized subject line like the bugs against wnpp have. One
possibility would just be RFR (request for removal), maybe with some
tags indicating which distribution would be affected. I like this
solution but one disadvantage is that a request for removal of N
packages would require filing N bugs. This would make things like
#198449 a little more inconvenient.
Probably there are other possibilities which I might have missed. The
first question is, would other people find this useful?
Lukas
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