Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?
On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 6:58 PM, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> True. Part of the problem is appropriate terminology. This is a case
>> of what I would call an "undermaintained" package. Even though the
>> maintainer is still around, and may be quite active elsewhere, this
>> package has not gotten any attention in 2 years (even though multiple
>> upstreams have been released in the meantime).
>
> Putting aside this specific example, I don't think the criteria you're
> using to evaluate whether a package is undermaintained is valid. It's not
> always correct that maintainers should be blindly packaging every upstream
> release, and if upstream releases are minor and not important to Debian,
> it's perfectly reasonable to not prioritize that packaging among the
> various other things that one is doing.
Agreed. It is more complicated than just length of time without an
upload, but that is a very straightforward quantity to look up and
keep track of.
If one sees a package that has not been uploaded in 2 years (or 6
months or however long), I think we should make it so that they can
feel free to liberal NMU it with a 10-day delay. If the maintainer
was really planning to hold the package back for some reason, they can
always cancel that (preferably with some kind of note as to why).
Best wishes,
Mike
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