Re: Can we orphan dlocate?
On Thu, Apr 12, 2007 at 09:40:08AM +0200, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-04-12 at 08:12 +0200, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > Just like all the other 10-year-old packages that have 7-year-old bugs? If
> > the package doesn't have any RC problems, why should it be orphaned just
> > because there are some older bugs?
> Yes.
> Package quality is not only measured by the number of RC bugs;
Nor is it measured only by the age of bugs on the package or the date of the
last upload.
> a larger set of bugs can make the quality go down significantly, even if a
> single one would not be release critical.
This is true, but the argument presented for orphaning this package was not
that it was known to be of poor quality, but that there are bugs on the
package that have been open for a long time.
> A non-orphaned package will, according to current practices, not have
> lesser important bugs fixed in NMU's, nor will someone easlily take over
> maintenance (it's considered "hijacking").
I hope it's not the case that people are afraid to fix < RC bugs in NMUs;
there are different standards of when/how to NMU for RC vs. non-RC bugs, but
NMUs for non-RC bugs are certainly allowed according to current practices.
> The current maintainer is not maintaining it in any sense of the word,
> so orphaning would be just as good in the worst case.
No, in the worst case, a package with no major usability problems ends up
removed from the archive because it is orphaned by QA and subsequently
tagged for removal because no one else is interested in maintaining it and
someone decides to do a run of purges for long-orphaned packages.
> > If anything, this looks to me like a veiled attempt to remove the
> > package from the archive,
> If you oppose *removing* packages that don't have RC-bugs, then you need
> to have another discussion.
No, I don't oppose that when the removal request comes from the maintainer
or the package was legitimately orphaned in the first place. What I oppose
is setting it up so a working package may be removed for no good reason.
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon@debian.org http://www.debian.org/
Reply to: