Re: Debconf QA BOF summary / handling of orphaned packages
On 30/07/09 at 17:16 +0200, Sven Hoexter wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 01:47:23PM +0200, Thomas Viehmann wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> > Experimental is a development resource and not a dump for packages that
> > should not be in unstable/testing. Abusing it sounds like a bad idea, so
> > IMO think the current regime with a tad (but not overly) more aggressive
> > removal once orphaned packages are more easily accessible seems like a
> > good idea.
>
> ACK. It feels wrong to have in exeprimental a mix of orphaned packages and
> stuff under strong developement.
>
> IMHO it would be nice to aim at a release without oraphaned packages.
That's totally unrealistic.
> Though with the discussion of a freeze in Dec. this might be ambious.
> One has to see where it produces complains from other devs and users
> when orphaned packages start to be missing on a larger scale.
>
> Would it make sense to create a list of orphaned packages and start
> with blocking them from entering testing (e.g. add a bug of RC priority)
> and subsequently remove them, including reverse deps, from testing?
> Or has someone already made such lists and played with something like this?
There's no complete list like you describe, since it's A LOT of work to
analyze each orphaned package. (I'd like to encourage you to start
working on analyzing some orphaned packages -- the full list doesn't
need to be done by the same person).
The reason why I think that moving some of the orphaned packages to
experimental is a good idea, is because often, you run into packages
that are still useful to a small number of users, have no alternative,
still basically work, but have been orphaned for >2 years with nobody
willing to maintain them. In that case, we should not release with such
packages, but it should still be available (though unsupported) to the
users.
--
| Lucas Nussbaum
| lucas@lucas-nussbaum.net http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ |
| jabber: lucas@nussbaum.fr GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F |
Reply to: