Re: [gentoo-dev] last rites: sys-fs/eudev

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Tue, Sep 12, 2023 at 9:36 AM Eddie Chapman <eddie@ehuk.net> wrote:
> in Gentoo. Have any of these 4 maintainers publicly said (anywhere) that
> they are not interested in being maintainers anymore (which is fine if
> that is the case)?  We're not talking here about a lone maintainer of some
> peripheral package that's disappeared leaving an orphaned package.

It isn't like somebody is censoring the lists or waging commit wars on
the metadata.xml/mask file.  If somebody was eager to maintain it I'm
sure they'd have spoken up.

> I'm an outsider to Gentoo development (just a heavy user for over a decade
> both personally and professionally) so I might have missed something. I
> just find it puzzling.

I'm not puzzled by what is going on, or by your email, because it
happens basically anytime a high-profile package is treecleaned.  Yes,
Gentoo is about choice, but somebody has to actually do work to make
the choices viable.  There are always more people interested in using
software than maintaining it.  The frustration is completely
understandable, but also kinda unavoidable.

Repo QA standards don't mean that it has to barely work for your
specific use case.  The package has to deal with compatibility issues
with stuff you don't use as well, which is why maintaining a system
package can be hard work.  It is usually less of an issue for more
ordinary applications, which tend to have fewer interactions.  If it
is "good enough" for you as it is, then just move it to a private
overlay and keep using it.  You probably would need to override a
virtual or two as well.  Or publish your work somewhere others can use
it.

--
Rich