Re: [gentoo-dev] missing metadata.xml

["Bryan Østergaard" <kloeri@gentoo.org>]

On Wed, Nov 22, 2006 at 02:08:12PM -0700, Steve Dibb wrote:
> Hi guys,
> 
> There are more than a few packages with missing metadata.xml in the 
> portage tree.  I've setup my funky little QA website to report on which 
> ones fall in that category, and here is the list right here:
> 
> http://spaceparanoids.org/gentoo/gpnl/qa.php?q=metadata
> 
> I've spent the morning fixing up most of them, adding blank metadata.xml 
> to them and assigning maintainer-needed@gentoo.org as the main 
> maintainer, which in hindsight was probably not the best approach (my 
> apologies).
> 
> Anyway, either way, it would be nice to get the few remaining packages 
> cleaned up, and if one of your packages is on that list, please update 
> or create the metadata.
> 
> I'll still be going through the rest of them and sorting out which ones 
> were last maintained by a dev that is now retired and continue assigning 
> them to maintainer-needed.
> 
I think the most important thing about adding "empty" metadata.xml files
with maintainer-needed as maintainer is that it _changes_ the package to
be unmaintained by definition (that's what maintainer-needed means after
all) and that we can't be sure that's actually true unless we spend a
lot of time examining each package and asking potential maintainers
if it's unmaintained.

So while I enjoy getting metadata cleaned up etc. I think it's important
to think about exactly what we're doing before "fixing" up a lot of
packages - in this case 300+ packages. You (all devs!) might even want
to ask on -dev ML if it's a good idea before touching up a huge number
of packages to make sure you don't change things in subtle,
unintentional ways.

Anyway, I appreciate you spending time on cleaning up the metadata.xml
files even if it might not have been the best idea in hindsight.

Regards,
Bryan Østergaard
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