Re: proposal: ITR (was Re: Removing packages perhaps too aggressively?)
On Thu, 01 Feb 2018 at 01:12:21 +0100, Adam Borowski wrote:
> Thus, I'd like to propose a new kind of wnpp bug: "Intent To Remove".
This sounds like a formalization of the "foo: should this package be
removed?" bugs that some people already use[1]. I was wondering whether
to suggest formalizing those in devref or something.
They should probably be bugs against the package itself rather than wnpp
(like the "should be removed?" bugs are), or X-Debbugs-Cc'd to the
package's contact address and marked as "affects", or something, to give
the maintainer (and other subscribers) one last chance to respond.
[1] I thought the canonical usertag for these was
https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/bts-usertags.cgi?tag=proposed-removal&user=debian-qa%40lists.debian.org
but that list looks much shorter than I expected it to be, so perhaps
I'm wrong (or perhaps the vast majority of proposed removals have
escalated to actual removals and so the bug got closed)
> As someone who watches the output of qa-rc a lot, most of the time I stare
> at the list, ponder "do I fix this? or would RoQA be better?", shrug and
> move on. Instead, we could file hundreds of ITRs, wait, then bury the ftp
> folks under a pile of removal requests.
Regular attendees of #debian-uk bug squashing parties will recognise this
pattern already :-)
> However, ITRs wouldn't be mandatory: the majority of packages can be removed
> outright; you'd file an ITR only if you believe there's some controversy.
So for example "RM: RoQA; unmaintained upstream, orphaned, low popcon"
(but with no actually known RC bugs) would go via an ITR bug, but
removals for long-standing RC bugs would usually be immediate? That
sounds fair, and is similar to common practice with "should this package
be removed?" bugs.
smcv
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