On Wed, 12 Aug 2015 05:16:03 +0200 Lukas Fleischer <lfleischer@archlinux.org> wrote:
Hi,
There seems to be quite some confusion about the package migration process and about package deletion. I would like to clarify my point of view. Hopefully it serves as a basis for discussion (i.e. technical discussion without attacking anybody personally).
As already mentioned a couple of times, cleaning up the AUR was one of the incentives for having users resubmit their packages. This has several advantages:
* Working packages: New users are confused when an AUR package does not build. However, packages are often broken because of being outdated or unmaintained.
* Less clutter: Working packages are easier to find. Package statistics are not distorted.
* Storage: Less space used for packages that do not work. On the AUR server and on mirrors.
So please do not upload packages any packages to AUR 4.0.0, unless you are interested in maintaining them. If a package has not been resubmitted to the AUR 4.0.0, the maintainer did not care about it for at least two months. Please either decide to maintain such a package or wait for somebody else willing to do so.
<snip>
Regards, Lukas
You're making one massive and incorrect assumption: that packages that don't have an official "Maintainer" listed are broken. But you have no idea why they're orphaned. In my case, I have some that I'm actively trying to get maintainers for; in the mean time, I'm looking after them even though they are listed as being orphaned. Is this not to be allowed now? Should all "orphan" packages in the official repos be deleted, just assume nobody is looking after them? I updated one package just a few days before it was randomly deleted. There's other stories further up in this thread about them being deleted after only a few hours, all with no notice. If a time limit is to be implemented, it needs to be limit long enough that the package is both unlikely to be being used and unlikely to work anymore. A month or two wouldn't cut it. A notice should also be sent out to anyone set to get notifications for that package with enough lead time for someone to pick it up. Doug