Removing packages perhaps too aggressively?
Hi everyone,
It has happened to me in the recent years quite a few times that a
package which I was using has a RoQA bug filed against it, and the
package's got removed at a very short notice.
For example, in #616376, gbdfed was removed because "low popcon,
orphaned". It took just one day to remove it, with no discussion at all.
Orphaned is *not* a bug. Orphaned doesn't mean the package has no users.
Maybe the package works for them just fine, and they're happy. Should
I've known someone's going to remove it, I would have adopted it earlier.
Today, hyde. I worked on a new release of the package in July, leaving a
couple of things to be polished when I find more time. Today, I needed
to use the package, so I thought, oh, let me adopt and upload the
package. Here you go, there's #871004 for you. Missed jessie, stretch,
not in testing, no uploads since the beginning of 2017. Filed on 06 Aug
2017, removed 10 Sep 2017. Fair enough, the notice was on display for a
whole month. In a place resembling a locked filing cabinet stuck in a
disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.
Well, I'm a DD, so it's not a big deal for me to re-upload it, wait for
a couple hundred years^W hours for it to go through NEW, but…
Should we maybe give it *a bit* more visibility? Let RoQA bugs hang
around for *at least* a month, maybe post notification emails every
fortnight so that they can be noticed? Encourage newcomers to pick them
up? Prodding DDs who's last reported bugs against the package to maybe
pick it up?
Feel free to tell me I'm wrong and don't understand something, but if
you do, please explain me how and why :)
--
Cheers,
Andrej
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