[arch-general] [arch-dev-public] Cleaning up orphaned packages

[Lukas Fleischer]

On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 04:19:25PM +0100, Pierre Schmitz wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> while the rebuild of unsigned packages is about to be finished we
> should start to think about our orphaned packages. ATM there about 430
> of them in core and extra 1); some of them are 8probably) not needed by
> any other package 2)
> 
> Here is my proposal:
> * Everybody please review the list and adopt packages that you use and
> might be willing to maintain.
> * If you maintain a package that depends on an orphan, please adopt it.
> It does not make sense to depend on an maintained package. Note that
> packages can have mroe than one maintainer; so you should share the
> workload.
> * If a TU wants to maintain an orphan that is currently in [extra],
> please let us know.

I remember that some packages were hold back and weren't moved to
[community] on former [extra] cleanups, even though they didn't have a
maintainer (I'm not sure about the reasons anymore; I remember some of
them were used on gerolde or so, not sure if that is still relevant).
You should probably double-check these.

Apart from that, +1 to this idea. I already checked the list of unneeded
orphans and there's >20 packages I'd like to maintain if they aren't
picked up in [extra]...

> * Maybe we can also have a small team that adopts all orphans that
> nobody wants to adopt on their own but is needed.

Sounds like a good idea as well, at least for packages that are easy to
maintain ("easy" meaning that upstream releases don't require much more
work than bumping the pkgver and updating checksums). Packages that
require a packager, who actually uses them, can still be dropped/moved.

> 
> The goal should be to adopt all needed/wanted orphans and remove
> everything else.
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> Pierre
> 
> 
> 1)
> https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?sort=&arch=any&arch=x86_64&repo=Core&repo=Extra&q=&maintainer=orphan&last_update=&flagged=&limit=50
> 2) https://www.archlinux.org/devel/reports/unneeded-orphans/
> 
> -- 
> Pierre Schmitz, http://pierre-schmitz.com