Re: Orphaned packages in testing which were never in stable
On Tue, Apr 16, 2002 at 01:59:04PM +0200, Tille, Andreas wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Apr 2002, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > It takes, what, twenty minutes to upload a package with the Maintainer:
> > field changed? A few hours every couple of months are enough to keep
> > it fairly adequately maintained. If the packages aren't worth that much
> > time from anyone, they're not worth keeping.
>
> Hmm, you do not honestly want to tell me that "Maintaining" is equal
> to uploading a package with correctly set maintainer field. It is
> caring about bugs, updates etc.
Which -qa doesn't have the capacity to do. One of the zope-* packages in
question sat with release-critical bugs for over a *year*; I finally
decided to fix it recently, but I have absolutely no clue about either
Python or Zope and if my fix was as good as it could be it was probably
only by pure luck. Easy packages can be maintained by -qa well enough if
necessary, but the packages Martin filed on were mostly ones that
require reasonably specialist skills and *need* a maintainer. Any
maintainer who's awake and even vaguely responsible is better than
leaving the package orphaned.
Every package where you say "oh, it can just stay orphaned, -qa will
take care of it" means that the QA bug list gets ever more enormously
long and impossible to deal with. I for one can only face dealing with
it once every couple of weeks at the moment, which does nobody any good,
and I certainly wouldn't want to have to help manage security updates
for every one of those throughout the next release cycle. Martin has the
guts to go through the inevitable fight any time somebody suggests
removing an orphaned package, and I'll stand right behind him.
If you disagree with particular packages being removed, then the right
thing to do is either to make a to-the-point response to the bug reports
explaining why you think it's important that these packages should stay
in woody even without a maintainer, or else to pick them up or find
somebody who will. Long drawn-out arguments on the mailing list just
waste everyone's time.
> > it clutters the BTS,
>
> I just subscribed the packages I mentioned in ppt so I also just
> get a notice and would *try* to care about bugs - but this is no
> *maintainance* in my eyes.
You're more interested than anyone else is, then. If this is the extent
of our willingness to support the package, then the package should be
removed unless it's absolutely necessary to the project.
"In addition, the packages in main ... must not be so buggy that we
refuse to support them." -- Debian Policy Manual, section 2.1.2
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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