Re: Delinquent maintainers?
On (12/08/06 22:07), Carl Fink wrote:
> How long does a package have to sit with unfixed bugs before the maintainers
> are considered to be inactive? I mentioned on this list wanting to use VLC,
> which has now sat un-migratable for almost one year.
There is a team of developers who try and weed out inactive maintainers.
They also try and fix the really important bugs of neglected packages.
The only bug of this type affecting vlc is one that doesn't affect
usability.
Do you mean by un-migratable that it isn't in etch? If so I have
sympathy for you, but it is possible to get it by other means, and the
bug that is keeping it out of etch means that it shouldn't be in Debian
at all in it's current state.
>
> Since nothing was happening there I figured I'd install checkinstall and
> then install VLC from source--but checkinstall has sat with grave bugs
> unfixed for over 240 days itself. This is a package mentioned in the
> Administrator section of the Debian web site
> (http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/147), but apparently nobody
> is maintaining it.
Firstly a note that debian-administration.org is not an official site.
It is however a brilliant site and incredibly useful (thanks Steve).
The grave bugs you refer to are tagged unreproducible, meaning that the
maintainer has no idea why they happen, and cannot reproduce them to try
and investigate.
If you are suffering from a bug that is tagged unreproducible then you
should send an update to the bug report explaining your situation, and
giving any information you can, and ask the maintainer to remove the
tag. You could also aid the maintainer to try and identify what causes
the problem so that it can be fixed.
>
> I'm simply not qualified to maintain either package. What else can I do?
In the case of vlc I'm afraid there's little you can do, as it is a
licensing issue. If you really want to fix it you can pester the
upstream author to sort out the issues, or write a replacement under a
better license.
In the case of checkinstall I suggest that you try it, and if you
encounter the problem help the maintainer to fix it. It looks like the
chances of you hitting the bugs is slim though.
If all you want to do is install vlc then you can use apt pinning and
install the version from unstable.
James
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James Westby -- GPG Key ID: B577FE13 -- http://jameswestby.net/
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