Orphaning Candidate packages for removal due to FTBFS, implications

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sat, 16 Jan 2010 05:13:29 +0100, Ralf wrote:

> On 01/15/2010 08:17 PM, Matt Domsch wrote:
> >
> > At today's FESCo meeting, it was agreed that all the below packages
> > would be marked orphan.
>
> Well, if FESCO thinks this was a good idea ... I think you guys stopped 
> half-ways: You better should have launched AWOL-processes against these 
> maintainers.

It's a more fundamental problem, though. The AWOL-process is for people,
not for packages. The people may still be active (and even known to be
active somewhere) and not AWOL, but the packages which are assigned to
them would still look orphaned. FTBFS is just one way to find packages
that don't even build.
However, if that happens, it may be much too late. Such a package may have
been in an unmaintained desolate state for a long time already. With
nobody handling the incoming bugzilla tickets. With some bug reports having
been killed in an automated way at dist EOL. And worse if it turns out
that packages which do build are unmaintained nevertheless, with the same
symptoms in bugzilla and in package scm.

Makes me wonder what bugzilla status report scripts we have? To create a
list of potentially unmaintained packages earlier and to detect packages
with non-responsive owners.