[arch-general] Bug reports for out of date packages?

[Allan McRae]

Aaron Griffin wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 7:02 PM, Daenyth Blank <daenyth+arch at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> 2009/4/6  <hollunder at gmx.at>:
>>     
>>> On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:37:14 +0200
>>> Ondřej Kučera <ondrej.kucera at centrum.cz> wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> Arch's packages usually (almost always) get updated pretty fast and
>>>> the system "don't create a bug report, just flag the package out of
>>>> date to get dev's/TU's attention" works fine. But sometimes there
>>>> exist packages both in community and in extra (I'm not sure about
>>>> core but maybe even there) that don't get updated even after a
>>>> significant time from the upstream's release (e. g. swt, amarok, jre
>>>> or jdk from the nearest past). Shouldn't there be a time limit (two
>>>> weeks? a month?) after which it would be OK to create a bug report?
>>>> That way there could be a discussion about why that package
>>>> hasn't/couldn't be updated and everyone would know where to look for
>>>> the reasons without having to go through mailing list archives, bbs
>>>> and so on.
>>>>
>>>> Just a thought though.
>>>>
>>>> Ondřej
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> I wondered about that as well.
>>> For example jack-audio-connection-kit, qjackctl and ardour, all in
>>> extra, have been out of date at least since I joined arch, and I
>>> believe this was around October/November. Mailing the maintainer didn't
>>> help.
>>>
>>> Philipp
>>>
>>>       
>> Send a mail to the mailing list if the maintainer doesn't respond
>> (preferably attach the PKGBUILD you updated)
>>     
>
> This is probably the best way - send an updated PKGBUILD that you've
> personally tested and you know works fine. This is generally how I've
> been doing gnucash anymore, as I stopped using it, but I get regular
> updates from people who like the package and test it
>
> If you're looking for "multiple maintainers", this is probably the
> best way, even if it is informal
>   

Maybe we should have some way of sorting packages by how long they have 
been flagged out of date.  Two that come up on the forums a lot recently 
are gmpc and obex-data-server so I will push updates sometime tomorrow 
if no-one else does...

Allan