[aur-general] Deletion of orphaned packages on AUR4

[Doug Newgard]

On Wed, 12 Aug 2015 05:16:03 +0200
Lukas Fleischer <lfleischer at archlinux.org> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> There seems to be quite some confusion about the package migration
> process and about package deletion. I would like to clarify my point of
> view. Hopefully it serves as a basis for discussion (i.e. technical
> discussion without attacking anybody personally).
> 
> As already mentioned a couple of times, cleaning up the AUR was one of
> the incentives for having users resubmit their packages. This has
> several advantages:
> 
> * Working packages: New users are confused when an AUR package does not
>   build. However, packages are often broken because of being outdated or
>   unmaintained.
> 
> * Less clutter: Working packages are easier to find. Package statistics
>   are not distorted.
> 
> * Storage: Less space used for packages that do not work. On the AUR
>   server and on mirrors.
> 
> So please do not upload packages any packages to AUR 4.0.0, unless you
> are interested in maintaining them. If a package has not been
> resubmitted to the AUR 4.0.0, the maintainer did not care about it for
> at least two months. Please either decide to maintain such a package or
> wait for somebody else willing to do so.
>
> <snip>
>
> Regards,
> Lukas

You're making one massive and incorrect assumption: that packages that don't
have an official "Maintainer" listed are broken. But you have no idea why
they're orphaned.

In my case, I have some that I'm actively trying to get maintainers for; in the
mean time, I'm looking after them even though they are listed as being
orphaned. Is this not to be allowed now? Should all "orphan" packages in
the official repos be deleted, just assume nobody is looking after them? I
updated one package just a few days before it was randomly deleted. There's
other stories further up in this thread about them being deleted after only a
few hours, all with no notice.

If a time limit is to be implemented, it needs to be limit long enough that the
package is both unlikely to be being used and unlikely to work anymore. A month
or two wouldn't cut it. A notice should also be sent out to anyone set to get
notifications for that package with enough lead time for someone to pick it up.

Doug