[arch-dev-public] Repo Distinctions

[Simo Leone]

On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 06:35:47PM -0400, Paul Mattal wrote:
> So I've been listening to the discussion about what should and 
> shouldn't be in extra so far, and I've come to the following 
> conclusions:
> 
> 1) Niche is subjective.
> 
> 2) Even if it weren't, whether a package is "niche" or "mainstream" 
> is not a good criterion for classifying it in one repo or another.
> 
> 3) Some good criteria for classifying packages in one repo or 
> another are:
> 
>    a) Desire to maintain a package long-term.
>    b) Association with a particular group of people you trust.
> 
> 4) There are many who actually do trust developers more than TUs. 
> This is not intended as a judgement, rather as an observation.
> 
> My feeling is that we should have under the developer umbrella a 
> split of the existing [extra] into two repos:
> 
> [main] - to be in the main repo, a package must be voted in by a 
> majority of the developers; we commit to maintaining these packages 
> over a long period of time, and announce 6-12 months in advance if 
> we're going to remove them (and again, this removal requires a 
> majority vote); there should never be any orphans in here, and we 
> should be extremely stingy about putting packages in here in the 
> first place
> 
> [extra] - developers can maintain any packages in here they wish; if 
> they decide to orphan them, they must announce that to the 
> developers and TUs and see if anyone wants to take them on; if 
> nobody wants them, they get demoted and orphaned in unsupported so 
> that the community can still benefit from the work they once did
> 
> This is just a proposal intended as a starting point for discussion. 
> But I think some notion of a supported group of [main] packages that 
> we collectively commit to maintaining will make us feel less bad 
> about a more in-flux [extra]. Also, a clear process about what you 
> do when you orphan a package helps get those packages picked up by 
> those with time or inclination to deal with them.
> 
> For those who would say: why not just use [community] as the [extra] 
> you're proposing above? The answer: so you can tell which group of 
> individuals is standing behind these packages-- the developers. With 
> that information, you can then decide for yourself who to trust.
> 

Sounds like making a mountain out of a mole hill to me. What's wrong
with something simple like... extra is for packages that aren't integral
to the distro which the devs feel like maintaining, and community is for
packages tus feel like maintaining, and unsupported is for things no one
wants to maintain?

-S
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