Re: Bug#798476: Returning to the requirement that Uploaders: contain humans
On Wed, Aug 02, 2017 at 05:48:15PM -0400, Sean Whitton wrote:
>...
> I've also included a purely informative change which emphasises that
> packages that are team maintained in name only should be orphaned
> properly, with their maintainer field set to the QA team. This is
> already current best practice, but it's worth emphasising, because one
> might fail to orphan a package on the grounds that "someone else on the
> team might fix it", which is not true of a lot of teams.
>...
> @@ -1149,6 +1142,12 @@
> </para>
> </footnote>
> </para>
> + <para>
> + This includes packages with a group of people or team in the
> + <literal>Maintainer</literal> control field. They should be
> + orphaned if the team is not actively maintaining the package.
> + </para>
> +
> </section>
>
> <section id="s-descriptions">
>...
Please be more thoughtful about the consequences of such changes to policy.
This would not be "a purely informative change".
Your suggested wording has the potential to create a HUGE amount of tensions.
I could name a lot of team-maintained packages where a team member
uploads a new upstream version every 1-2 years and noone ever bothers
to handle incoming bugs.[1]
If policy does not provide a definition of "actively maintaining",
it would be a reasonable interpretation to consider a package with
no upload or visible activity in new open bugs during the past
6 or 12 months as not actively maintained.
If policy states that such packages "should be orphaned" without
describing a proper process, it is a valid reading that everyone can do
this without trying to contact the team prior to orphaning the package.
And it does not even help with the problem Tobias raised:
When a maintainer retires or is declared MIA by the MIA team according
to the MIA process, how can you *find* all teams and team-maintained
packages where this maintainer was the only or last active team member
when there is no Uploaders: field?
This information could be moved from the Uploaders: field to
a database, but then this database has to exist and maintaining
the information there has to be mandatory when no Uploaders: field
is present.
Another option would be to keep the Uploaders: requirement,
but make it more clear that autogenerating is permitted.
The GNOME team already generates Uploaders: as the intersection
of current team members and people who did the latest 10 uploads
of a package.
cu
Adrian
[1] a few people are IMHO just bad maintainers, but in the common
case there is simply too much work for too few people in a
volunteer project and new team members are always welcome
--
"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed
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