Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: RFC: Project proposal -- maintainer-wanted

[Mart Raudsepp <leio@gentoo.org>]

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On Sun, 2009-05-17 at 12:08 -0600, Ryan Hill wrote:
> On Thu, 14 May 2009 03:32:12 +0300
> Mart Raudsepp <leio@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> > Project maintainer-wanted
> > =========================
> > 
> > Abstract:
> > There are currently quite some package requests (over 3000) languishing
> > on bugzilla waiting for a developer or team to get interested and
> > package it in the official gentoo-x86 portage tree. However in quite
> > some cases that might not happen for quite a while even with very
> > popular packages desired by users. The purpose of the maintainer-wanted
> > project is to get as many of such packages to the official tree as
> > possible as a stopgap solution.
> 
> Actually, I'm working on a "get the crap out of the tree" project that is
> pretty much the exact opposite of this. ;)

I don't think it opposes it much, maybe only 2-5% of maintainer-needed
packages.
Popular packages aren't crap. Their packaging ease might be, but
obviously people want to use those if they are popular, hence we can't
dub them really "crap".
We could say those packages are "crap" that get building bugs filed by
tinderbox runs from Patrick, Diego and other such people, while no-one
else has cared. The maintainer-wanted project would not be interested in
any such packages. Those are obviously dead applications/libraries that
are in no way popular and very beneficial to carry in the official tree.

> But, things I like:
> 
> - metrics for package popularity (can we do gentoo-stats already?)

Yeah, that'd be cool. Some other metrics ideas I brought out that can be
used for this projects purposes while there is no gentoo-stats.

> - encouraging teams and maintainers to take an interest in unmaintained
>   packages

It being a project/team making it more likely it doesn't degrade over
time when there is no dedicated team maintaining this. Maybe we could
make it so that when a package maintained by someone specific
(individual or team) that was taken over from maintainer-wanted would
drop back to maintainer-wanted team instead of maintainer-needed herd,
as the latter currently has technically no members.

> - keeping track of maintainer-wanted/needed packages through categorization,
>   etc.
> - proxy-maintainers
> 
> These things I think would benefit both projects, as well as several others.
> 
> I would actually rather see our overall package count dropping than growing,
> but if we're adding quality, maintained stuff and tossing out the garbage then
> I guess that's an improvement too.

Indeed.

-- 
Mart Raudsepp
Gentoo Developer
Mail: leio@gentoo.org
Weblog: http://planet.gentoo.org/developers/leio

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