Re: Removing orphaned packages from testing
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.
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.
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.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog
Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch :
http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/
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