[aur-general] Proposal: Mass AUR Cleanup

[Thomas Dziedzic]

On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 3:11 PM, Peter Lewis <pete at muddygoat.org> wrote:
> 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 had been flagged out of date and promptly updated it.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
>

I would be all for orphaning the outdated packages.
The only condition is that there should be a public "one week notice"
on the main site so that it will give people a chance to unflag it or
fix it.

My two cents.