[aur-general] Deletion of orphaned packages on AUR4

[Bruno Pagani]

Le 12 août 2015 07:51:28 GMT+02:00, Justin Dray <justin at dray.be> a écrit :
>On Wed, 12 Aug 2015 at 15:37 Rob McCathie <korrode at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 12/08/15 13:49, Doug Newgard wrote:
>> > 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
>>
>> Same here. I was still monitoring the couple of packages i'd
>orphaned, i
>> was hoping someone would take over maintenance. For a time at least,
>i'd
>> have addressed any issues with them.
>>
>> Anyways, i've re-added the packages and will stay maintainer of them
>> until things settle down a bit.
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>>
>> Rob McCathie
>>
>
>I've had to do the same thing. The problem is, if it isn't orphaned,
>and
>you try to update it when you get a chance it is hard to find a new
>maintainer. I've never seen someone ask for maintainership of a
>maintained
>and up-to-date package before. From the reports I'm seeing as well it's
>a
>single TU deleting them all.
>
>- Justin

That’s my exact opinion: people (including me) won’t adopt a package if everything seems OK. And adding a comment to tell users that you don’t want to maintain this anymore is not a solution: users might not be suscribed. While if it goes orphaned, tools like yaourt tell you so.

All the packages I maintain(ed) where either orphaned or severely outdated when I got them, and in this last case this often involve inactive maintainer requiring disowning request.

So if we don’t let people disown without deletion, we might also face increasing occurrences of this second case.

Bruno