Proposal for using the BTS for WNPP
There was a proposal recently of making use of the bug tracking system to
automate maintenance of the WNPP, since it does not seem to be automated
currently and people are not satisfied that it is kept up to date. Using
the BTS would seem to be effective enough and require a minimal amount
of effort to implement. I didn't notice anything happening about this,
at least yet, nor I see any concrete proposal for all the details. Let's
see what I can do to help to move this further.
Summary: Create a "wnpp" pseudo-package to replace the WNPP page, and
map severity levels to different WNPP categories.
The WNPP page lists the following categories of packages
(http://www.debian.org/doc/prospective-packages.html):
* orphaned,
* withdrawn from distribution,
* maintained but its developer would like to find a new person,
* currently being worked on to include in the distribution, and
* good ideas -- nice to have, but no one is yet working on them.
Current practice is already to report withdrawn packages as bugs against
the "ftp.debian.org" pseudo-package. If we treat an intent-to-orphan
effectively the same as orphaning (if the maintainer later notices no-one
has taken over the package, he can close the bug), we could map the
remaining ones to severity levels
orphaned important, title preferably begins with "O:"
ITO important, title preferably begins with "ITO:"
ITP normal, title preferably begins with "ITP:"
RFP wishlist, title preferably begins with "RFP:"
The debian-devel mailing list should be marked as the maintainer of the
wnpp psuedo-package. A new debian-wnpp mailing list was proposed, but
that has the drawback that ITP's are less visible, and the feedback from
license issues, etc, is lost to most people. Therefore, continue with
debian-devel, where they are dealt with even now.
The procedures would then be like this:
orphan: file an "important" bug; when someone takes the package
over, they will close the bug
ITO: file an "important" bug requesting a new maintainer; then,
if no-one takes it over and you want to continue with it, close
the bug yourself
ITP: file a "normal" bug; when you upload the package, close
the bug
RFP: file a "wishlist" bug; when someone packages it, they will
close the bug
People wishing to help with WNPP maintenance can then scan the bug list
for "wnpp" and close ITP bugs for packages that are already there, or
deal with multiple ITP's for the same package, and so on.
Would this work? Does anyone oppose this? Did I leave anything out?
--
Lars Wirzenius <liw@wapit.com>
Architect, Kannel WAP and SMS Gateway project, Wapit Ltd, http://www.kannel.org
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