Re: [PROPOSAL] Archive audit, cruft removal, unmaintained packages
On Tue, 17 Aug 1999, Ben Collins wrote:
<good stuff removed>
>
> To resolve one of the issues, I propose the DPL appoint an audit group.
> This group will go through the archive (either manually or using
> internally created scripts) and generate detailed lists of dangling
> source/packages and post them for removal via the BTS and/or direct email
> to the archive maintainers. They will also generate lists of obsolete and
> unmaintained packages that are in the archive (the age of innactivity of
> maintainership to be determined by a set time length and attempts at
> contacting the last known maintainer for a defined amount of time). Some
> of these packages could be put into a new directory called old-obsolete/,
> this may be in binary form or source only (not sure which would be
> better), others may simply be removed completely from the archive. These
> lists should be publically available to provide notice as well as to
> update WNPP (not all abandoned packages are known).
>
This is a great idea Ben!
I have a script (actually a set of scripts) I use to select subsets of the
distribution from the total archives. I typically build the lists that
drive these scripts from the override file (selecting subsets by priority,
and augmenting the resulting lists as dependencies and additional packages
are warrented), and search the source files for the source of the package,
and then obtain the associated binary. One of the side effects of this
search is a log file listing all the packages that were not found in the
source archive. I guess if you ran the script with the total override file
as the driver, you should get all the packages that are no longer produced
by the existing source. If this looks like a good place to start, I'm
happy to provide my scripts as a starting point.
> Let's please consider this rationally, don't get pissy just because I
> would like to see Debian's archive better maintained with less dated cruft
> and more relevant, maintained packages.
When do we ever get pissy ;-)
Luck,
Dwarf
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