Re: Removing packages perhaps too aggressively?

[Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com>]

On Friday, February 02, 2018 06:44:36 PM Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 02, 2018 at 02:29:49AM +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 02, 2018 at 12:00:58AM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> > > Currently, RM bugs are filed against ftp.debian.org.
> > > 
> > > It might make sense to have them filed against ftp.debian.org *and* the
> > > package to be removed, instead. That way, people who care about the
> > > package are more likely to see that it is about to be removed, and can
> > > take corrective action if they don't want to have that happen?
> > 
> > It'd probably make sense to use
> > https://www.debian.org/Bugs/server-control#affects for this.
> 
> How would that help?
> 
> Example:
> 
> Subject: RM: hello -- RoM; obsolete
> Control: affects -1 src:hello
> 
> For the few days or hours between the RM bug being filed and the
> package actually being removed, this would show up at
>   https://bugs.debian.org/src:hello
> 
> The chances of someone looking at this specific BTS page during the
> short amount of time between it showing up there and the actual
> removal are close to zero.

I think we are going to modify the pending removals page to indicate which 
requests are recent or have recent activity on the bug.  I think that will put 
at least a little cushion in.  As the FTP team member processing most of the 
rm bugs recently, what I mostly want is to have to touch the bug once.  Once 
there's a visual indication it should be left to ripen for now, I'll be glad 
to do that.
 
> BTW: And then the next problem would be that the ftp team tends
>      to ignore non-maintainer objections in RM bugs and removes
>      the package anyway.

If in the maintainer's opinion it's better to remove the package than to leave 
it in the archive unmaintained, I think this is generally appropriate (see my 
previous mentions about not thinking FTP team should second guess 
maintainers).  The one exception is if a non-maintainer objects to a removal 
and the objection includes them saying they will take over maintenance.  Of 
course that almost never happens.

Scott K