[arch-dev-public] Cleanup/Orphans - a BIG warning!

[Aaron Griffin]

On 10/2/07, Andreas Radke <a.radke at arcor.de> wrote:
> Am Mon, 1 Oct 2007 17:17:17 -0500
> schrieb "Aaron Griffin" <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com>:
>
> > == Pending Tasks, Short Term ==
> >
> > * New Round of Package Cleanup
> >
> > Let's try and get this "complete" this week. I'd like to get at least
> > 2 or 3 of us together with Eric to go through these packages and start
> > moving them to community or unsupported.
> >
> > We have an internal list for this here:
> > https://www.archlinux.org/wiki/Repo%20Cleanup/
> >
> > Please add candidates if you find them.
> >
> > Eric, when is a good time for you?
>
> I will help out with the cleanup.
>
> We had asked all developers to readopt their packages after the repo
> shuffle. We have a very bad situation right now! Still 916 packages
> orphaned. 6 developers listed on the dev website have 0 packages. Some
> other maintain only a few packages.
>
> Look what is orphaned: apache, bind, cvs, mono, python, freetype1/2,
> nspr/nss, pango, gimp, mutt, cdrkit, several desktops, bash, bzip2,
> gcc-libs, kernel26 and many more!
>
> We were talking about our intention to have more than one maintainer
> per package. But we do not act like that. Having so important packages
> unmaintained means nobody follows the projects mailing lists. No quick
> updates, bug fixes, no security fixes...
>
> So get your ass up and adopt packages you want to keep in our
> distribution!
>
> DEADLINE for adopting packages should be this coming weekend. Then the
> cleanup will start.
>
> 2 all devs: Isn't that more important than telling something about how
> much alcohol we drink?

Andy, Andy, Andy. Let's not get angry about this.

See the thing is as follows:
You asked us to do this, and disappeared. If you want people to do
things, you can't act all silly like this.

In addition (here comes the Big Hat) - the only people who should be
mandating things are the "enablers" - we can't have everyone throwing
out random mandates for things that were mentioned once and only once.
That's how we get to the chaos we're in now.

Here's the thing: orphan packages aren't a huge deal. There. I said
it. This isn't critical. Nothing is burning, nothing is on fire, so
calm down.

Now, because Andy has been so lax in keeping up with what I kindly,
and nicely asked him to, and responds in this manner, I have to step
in here.

See, Andy, I figured I could delegate work to you and you would handle
this task like a manager should, but I guess it doesn't work that way.

--------------------------------------------------

So. To summarize the email above:

After the core repo move, we have a lot of orphan packages, and important ones.

So, let's readopt them.

I am giving everyone until tomorrow night to adopt what packages you
_want_ - first come first serve.

After that, I will go through all orphans, and determine if they are important.

Then, I will post a list of what we need to maintain to this ML, and
let people adopt them.

On Friday, if they are not adopted, I will assign them as I see fit.

----------------------------------------

Now, please note. I am going to be sending a follow up email here.

Andy mentioned that we have "6 developers with 0 packages", and I want
to address this because it is something very very critical to us
moving forward.