Orphaning Candidate packages for removal due to FTBFS, implications

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sat, 16 Jan 2010 10:59:56 +0100, Hans wrote:

> On 01/15/2010 09:01 PM, Till Maas wrote:
> >
> > What about the other packages of these maintainers? E.g. in the
> > recordmydesktop case, there were four bugs open with working patches
> > attached for that package. I did not yet check the other packages, but
> > in case a packager does not have the time anymore to maintain one
> > package from this list, why do we assume that he has the time to
> > maintain the others?
> > So before the mass orphaning is done, it would be nice to do it in a way
> > that allows to at least easily spot which maintainers owned the packages
> > before the orphage, so non responsive maintainers can be found easier.
> > Or tell all maintainers in question and orphan all their packages. But
> > the current solution seems to be only half-baked.
> >
> 
> You know we have a procedure for this it is called the awol maintainer
> procedure and it would be nice if FESco would follow its on procedures
> here.
> 
> Ah well I guess the rules don't apply to those who make them :(

That view is overly pessimistic.

We are in need of more automated procedures and more automated triggers.
And we need to find ways how to detect non-responsive, inactive or
overwhelmed contributors sooner. Fedora has grown out of proportions. It's
good to see the community of contributors grow further, but in some areas
it doesn't scale nevertheless.

There is only a single package owner in pkgdb. A single person who is the
default assignee of tickets in bugzilla. We should aim at making every
assignee in bz a person who is responsive OR have enough co-maintainers on
the watchbugzilla list to be responsive instead.

It doesn't work well if arbitrary packagers "keep alive" a package without
being the package's official maintainers -- and if the assignee is like
/dev/null for problem reports or perhaps has left the project already.
We can't wait for the one in a thousand bug reporters who will escalate a
problem instead of resigning in disappointment. Two months without a
reply, three months without a reply ... what to expect?

FESCo ought to give the FTBFS tickets a special status. Unhandled FTBFS
tickets will trigger the AWOL procedure for the assignee in bugzilla. The
assignee will have to respond to the various pings and fix the package
ownership in pkgdb if appropriate. A single reply in multiple weeks or an
extended period of time. No harm is done if others need to take care of
the package temporarily anyway. If somebody else has fixed the FTBFS
meanwhile, consider yourself lucky. Then you've avoided the FTBFS->AWOL
trigger, and some other monitoring software will need to detect
non-responsiveness, inactivity, orphans.