Re: Removing orphaned packages from testing
Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Feb 2009, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
>> What we need to do is:
>> 1) improve our ways to detect 'crap', to remove those packages from the
>> archive (it doesn't make sense to keep them in unstable). We need
>> safeguards to make mistakes less frequent.
>> 2) improve awareness of orphaned packages. During the QA BOF, the idea of
>> a script taking as input a list of packages (the list of locally
>> installed packages on a DD's system, for example), and outputting the
>> list of "problems" (RC bugs, O/RFA bugs) was raised. There was
>> opposition to providing this as something enabled by default in
>> devscripts, but it would still make sense to provide such a script.
>
> I see many people interested in removing packages, I would like people
> interested in finding maintainers for orphaned packages. It's a task
> that can be done by everybody (no need to be DD/DM) and we should try to
> recruit some volunteers for this.
Sure, and one of the ways to do it is by increasing the visibility of the
WNPP status. A couple of weeks or so I sent an email to -qa about using
user categories to make the wnpp bugs page look nicer, no response so far.
I in no way pretend to say that using user categories is a solution or that
it would really help, because I can't tell for sure, I can only speculate.
>
> As such I would like that we add a new step in the removal process that
> would be "Try to get in touch with the upstream community informing them
> on the need of a new maintainer" (exactly like we try to get in touch with
> MIA DD before orphaning packages, we should get in touch with upstream
> before removing stuff from Debian). We could have a sample mail
> for this explaining how to adopt the package, how to find sponsors for the
> start, how to use the PTS to follow the activity of the source package,
> etc.
Good idea.
>
> We could use the BTS forwarded field to store the fact that someone took
> care of contacting upstream. We point volunteers to a specific BTS urls
> that list all "O:" bugs that are not yet forwarded.
>
That can currently be done thanks to the automated user tagging. Use 'o' as
the wnpp@packages.debian.org user tag to select the orphaned packages.
Cheers,
--
Raphael Geissert - Debian Maintainer
www.debian.org - get.debian.net
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