Proposal: Package status page.

[Jakob Sandgren <jakob@idefix.campus.luth.se>]

After reading the thread about "lilo 21-1" and all the messages about
"when will XFree86-3.3.3 be availiable" I thought that a status page
about package "completion" would be nice. I think it can be done in a
very autmatic way;

1. A program scans (freshmeat?) for a new upstream release, when a new
   release is availiable, a message is sent to the maintainer.
2. The maintainer replys to the message with ETA or some other
   information (maybe this release should not become a .deb for some
   reason). 
3. The response from the maintainer is automaticaly processed and a
   status page is updated.
4. (Optional) The maintainer can mail delay information etc. to update the
    status page.
5. A program scans Incoming and dists/* and updates the status page
   when the .deb file arrives and updates the status page.

It's only [2] and the optional [4] that needs some input from the
maintainer, and that would be a single email with a keyword in. 
One other good thing(?) would be that it would be possible to generate
a log of statistics; how many packages have new upstream releases,
what is the average time it takes to generate a .deb from an upstream
release etc etc... ;)

Opinions (on the idea or the implementation)?

Forgive me if this is a allready discussed subject, I'm quite new to
this mailinglist.


/Jakob




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