[aur-general] Proposal: Mass AUR Cleanup

[Peter Lewis]

On Sunday 03 October 2010 at 20:18 Ray Rashif wrote:
> Anyway, we cannot mass-orphan them without checking. It is simply not
> right, no matter the statistics. For example, cutegod [1] is owned by
> Dragonlord, a TU. He might have his reasons. Like him, many others who
> are not TUs might have their reasons.

I'm erring this way too, but haven't voted yet.

Actually, after this list of packages was first posted, I emailed a few of the 
maintainers to see if they were still interested in maintaining the packages, 
and if so could they update them or else let us know that they can be 
orphaned.

In at least one case [1] the maintainer had simply forgotten that the packakge 
had been flagged out of date and promptly updated it. I imagine that there are 
a few like this who would appreciate some prompting. In another case, the 
maintainer told me that the packgage was a duplicate of another and could be 
deleted.

I wonder if a better approach might be to have the ability for TUs (or 
others?) to trigger a "we don't think you're maintaining this any more, it 
will be orphaned soon if you don't do anything" notification. If the 
maintainer doesn't unflag it, update it, whatever within a period of time, the 
package is automatically orphaned.

I'm hesitant about going ahead and bulk orphaning things, if only because with 
the small amount of effort I put in I found a maintainer who was still willing 
and just forgot.

Pete.


[1] kdestyle-polyester http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=19745