Orphaned Packages in rawhide (2015-08-25)

[Pierre-Yves Chibon]

On Wed, Aug 26, 2015 at 03:21:52PM +0200, Vít Ondruch wrote:
> Dne 26.8.2015 v 15:19 Stephen John Smoogen napsal(a):
> > On 26 August 2015 at 02:40, Vít Ondruch <vondruch at redhat.com> wrote:
> >> Dne 25.8.2015 v 20:33 opensource at till.name napsal(a):
> >>> and will be retired when they are orphaned for six weeks
> >>>
> >>>       Package                    (co)maintainers             Status Change
> >>> ==========================================================================
> >>> apache-poi             orphan                                7 weeks ago
> >>> ekg                    orphan, karlik                        9 weeks ago
> >>> ekg2                   orphan, karlik                        9 weeks ago
> >>> fwbuilder              orphan, till                          12 weeks ago
> >>> javanotes              orphan                                8 weeks ago
> >>> jtnef                  orphan                                7 weeks ago
> >>> python-sgutils         orphan, grover                        7 weeks ago
> >>> python-sysv_ipc        orphan                                8 weeks ago
> >>> rubygem-rack-mount     orphan, vondruch                      8 weeks ago
> >>> rubygem-regin          orphan, vondruch                      8 weeks ago
> >>>
> >> This is a bit contradicting ...
> >>
> >>
> > Which part? That the package is orphaned for over 6 weeks? Retiring is
> > a manual task which means if tyll et al aren't available it doesn't
> > get done.
> > Or that it is comaintained? A lot of co-maintainers are only sort of
> > interested in a package and don't want to own it directly. Some do.
> > This is a reminder that the comaintainer should take over the package
> > or drop it if they don't want to take over maintainership.
> >
> 
> The former of course. May be I should open ticket against pkgdb
> requesting support for this.

What should pkgdb do? If a package is orphan it is announced by an email here,
then Till reminds co-maintainer that a package they once had interest in is
orphaned and if no actions occur the package is retired.
This is pretty much the usual workflow.

What could pkgdb do against this? Automatically retire a package after it has
been orphaned more than X days? Automatically send the email?
This sounds a lot like the cron jobs Till is running.


Pierre