Re: Overall bitrot, package reviews and fast(er) unmaintained package removals
Enrico Zini wrote:
>On Thu, Apr 07, 2016 at 10:34:24AM +1000, Brian May wrote:
>
>> In the past I have maintained some important packages by doing regular
>> NMUs when the maintainer is not responsive (including emails asking to
>> take over the package). So just because the *maintainer* hasn't made an
>> upload in a long time doesn't mean that nobody cares about the package.
>
>At DebConf in Portland there was a rough consensus on a package
>salvaging workflow, where after one has done a couple of NMUs on a
>package without seeing any activity from the maintainer, one can do a
>NMU with maximum delay that changes the maintainer field, taking over
>the package.
I remember leading a discussion about it at DC12, even.
>I seem to recall rediscussing it again in Heidelberg and finding even
>more consensus there, but it never seems to have made it to actual
>usage.
>
>I'd like it if salvaging packages this way actually became standard
>practice in Debian.
Definitely. But we still seem to have a few overly-territorial people
failing to maintain their packages. Not 100% sure what to do about
that, as that same subset of developers are also not likely to read
threads on d-devel.
--
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. steve@einval.com
"Further comment on how I feel about IBM will appear once I've worked out
whether they're being malicious or incompetent. Capital letters are forecast."
Matthew Garrett, http://www.livejournal.com/users/mjg59/30675.html
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