Re: Please notify the maintainers when removing packages
On Sun, May 04, 2003 at 12:55:10PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> On Sun, 4 May 2003 17:34:39 +0200, Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> said:
>
> > On Sun, May 04, 2003 at 12:07:42PM +0200, Michael Banck wrote:
> >> On Sun, May 04, 2003 at 10:18:29AM +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen
> >> wrote:
> >> > Based on this experience, I am surprised to find out that the
> >> > maintainer isn't notified when his package is scheduled for
> >> > removal. And I see that it helps to send an email to get them to
> >> > fix the package.
> >>
> >> The BugScan messages are sent to debian-devel-announce.
> >> Debian-devel-announce is a mandatory list for
> >> developers. Therefore, developers are notified of removals. qed.
>
> > Sure, and you have to scan 757 entries for checking if one of your
> > package is going to be removed.
>
> Umm, I generally check to see if my name is no the list, using
> string search mechanisms of my MUA. Doesn't your MUA allow you to
> search for strings in the mail received?
Why make it difficult for the maintainer, who is already giving his time
to debian, when it is not usefull. Also, if the package maintainer is
already not having enough time to correctly care about its package, he
will probably not be reading this mail anyway.
Sure i do a grep for my name in the mail, but i may miss things, and
anyway, i am not concerned, all my packages are in good shape.
Also, do you not think the users of the package deserve to know that
there is problem with a given package ? I think the correct solution to
this is to fill a bug report stating the about to be removed or
something such of the package, so that both the maintainer get informed
and also the user who cares about the package. Or do we not say in our
social contract that we will not hide problems ? And hiding this info
among 757 other entries in a mail almost nobody reads anyway, is also a
way of 'hiding problems'. This same thread came about years ago, and
when i suggested this, i was flamed, and the issue got dropped and now
we have it again.
It is not acceptable that just in order to save one person the trouble
of adding a line or two to the script and sending out a few mails (we
get 10 times that in spam each day), you make things more difficult for
all the concerned maintainers.
Maybe an explicative mail of the situation to the maintainer/BTS, and
asking for feedback on the problem and/or orphaning the package would be
a good solution don't you think.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
Reply to: