Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-commits] gentoo-x86 commit in dev-python/PyZilla: PyZilla-0.1.0.ebuild ChangeLog metadata.xml

[Nirbheek Chauhan <nirbheek@gentoo.org>]

On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 12:47 AM, Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 27, 2011 at 1:43 PM, Nirbheek Chauhan <nirbheek@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> Just start removing old[1] maintainer-needed packages. If people
>> complain, tell them to start maintaining it. If they continue to
>> complain, ignore them. As tree-cleaner, you have the power to do this
>> and not take bullshit from people about it.
>
> The intent of the TreeCleaner project (years ago) was to essentially
> look for packages in bugzilla that had lots of bugs and no maintainer.
>  For a while beandog essentially maintained a site that tracked this
> for us (Gentoo Package that need Lovin' was the awesome title.)
>
> From that list you either fixed the problems and commited them (e.g.
> you were a roving package maintainer) or you pmasked it and marked it
> for the deadpool.
>
> There is not much policy on treecleaning a package just because no one
> has touched it.  Time since last touch was just one of a dozen
> indicators used to find packages that are broken (because a package
> not touched since 2006 is also not likely to compile.)
>

Sure, that's the history. But what made sense back then doesn't make
sense now. Back then we didn't have 600+ packages that no one
maintains, and whose bugs go almost entirely unread. We had crazy
amounts of manpower back then.

As we evolve, the responsibilities of the different parts of Gentoo
also evolve. As such, the tree-cleaners project has evolved, and if
the team isn't allowed to clean the tree, then why do we even have it
anymore?

I really don't understand *why* people want to keep around
unmaintained packages. If a package is not maintained, we should come
up and say it outright. Trying to maintain the illusion of maintenance
is really bad — for each person reporting a bug about a package, 100
people who got that same bug don't report it at all. So what happens
when there are just 50 users for some packages? Half the time we won't
even know that one of them is broken[1]. The rest of the time, users
will get a bad impression of Gentoo saying "Man, half the packages
don't even work".

It's really simple:

(a) If the package has plenty of users, there should be no problems
finding a maintainer or a proxy-maintainer.
(b) If the package has few users and is high-maintenance, it's either
already broken, or will get broken soon without a maintainer. Find one
or remove it!
(c) If the package has few users and is low-maintenance, package.mask
it so we can figure out who the users are, and we can get them to
proxy-maintain it, it's so little work anyway, right?
(d) If the package has very few or no users, what the hell is it doing
unmaintained in the tree? It's just eating up disk inodes and space.

We all like to boast about how gentoo has 15,000 packages, but we
neglect to mention that more than 1000 of these are either
unmaintained or very poorly maintained. And this is a very
conservative number.

Let's not turn portage into a graveyard for packages. Let's just remove crap.

1. Writer is bad at statistics, this is probably inaccurate.

-- 
~Nirbheek Chauhan

Gentoo GNOME+Mozilla Team