On Sat, 19 Nov 2011 15:05:00 +0100 Hans de Goede <hdego...@redhat.com> wrote:
> This is a bit unusual bug-report I'm afraid normally I would've > send this as an email to the Debian package maintainer of > timidity, but it seems that timidity is currently orphaned in > Debian :| There has been no interest from anyone wanting to take over Debian maintenance of timidity since the previous maintainer orphaned it. It now has a release critical bug because the current source fails to build. The bug has been open for 3 months and is sufficient reason to remove timidity from Debian today. As you've expressed some interest, I'm willing to not file the removal bug right now but that doesn't exclude someone else doing precisely that. Given the status of the package in Debian, it is more likely that timidity will be removed rather than updated. Maybe once there is a functioning upstream and a new upstream release, someone may reintroduce the package into Debian. CC'ing the only person to express some interest. Geoffrey, if you are no longer interested in timidity, despite signs of interest from a possible new upstream, please retitle #585039 as O: instead of ITA: Hans: have you any clues about the pulseaudio issues? Joost Yervante Damad comments in the bug report orphaning timidity: > If you want to take over maintenance, be prepared to deal with obscure > pulseaudio issues. #585039 I think it would also be a very good idea, Hans, if you put a short message on bug #585039 about your interest in a new, fixed, upstream release as this will be one of the places people will look before seeking removal of timidity. That said, interest from upstream is not of itself going to stop removal from Debian. > The reason I'm sending this mail is because one of the Fedora > packages I (co)maintain is timidity. Recently we got a number > of bugreports related to timidity, and one of the conclusions > was that timidity needs some love. I sympathise, I've felt the same about other packages and gone into the cycle of getting the SourceForge project re-assigned, porting the code to current libraries and systems, only to find that the codebase really cannot sustain a second transition or some dependency simply becomes abandonware. The workload can gradually become unsustainable and sometimes it's simpler to just accept that the package has had too much bit rot already and it would be easier to drop it. > I also went through all the changes in the Debian package, and > were relevant have added those too. Note that I deliberately > did not include a few of the changes from Debian, as I believe > they are wrong! See below for details. As the potential new upstream, you are welcome to make that decision. It's better for Debian if there is just a new upstream release and then someone with sufficient interest (not me!) can look at what might need to be done to bring the Debian package up to date. Sadly, it is more likely that timidity will have to be removed and then, possibly, reintroduced if (and only if) someone reading this message gets sufficiently motivated to work on timidity in Debian. > So now I've a nice and polished version of timidity, and given > that the latest official release has been 6 years ago I think > it would be good to do a new official release, hence I've > contacted the current admin and developers of the sf.net > timidity project, hopefully they will allow me to take over > the sf.net project, I would have loved to work together > with the Debian maintainer on forming a new upstream, but alas. When there is a new release available via SF or some other site, please update bugs #649274 and #585039. (Don't feel obliged to keep with SF but generally I've found them supportive when someone offers to adopt an abandoned project). > I believe this patch is meant to fix a compiler warning, unfortunately > the patch does more then that, it actually changes the meaning of the code. ... as long as the package now builds on current Debian unstable (make distcheck using gcc-4.6 with binutils-gold on any current GNU/Linux distro will be a good test)... Sorry I cannot comment on the patches themselves, I don't care about timidity - my only concern is that broken & abandoned packages in Debian either find new maintainers or get removed. > Before looking at the Debian changes I spend an entire day tracking down > what I believe is the real cause for Debian bug 536252, after a similar > issue was reported in Fedora bug 710927: > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=710927 Be assured that your effort is respected but unless someone steps up to maintain your work in Debian, timidity *will* be removed. Now that timidity is on my radar, I'll keep an eye on it. If nobody responds to #649274 or #585039 or fixes the fail to build bug #639196 then I will ask for removal of timidity from Debian unstable and testing in ~ 10 days. > As said I hope to do a new upstream release soon, amongst a lot of bugfixes > this will also include IPV6 support for the relevant bits of timidity. If timidity doesn't get IPv6 support soon, it will end up being removed from Debian due to other release requirements anyway. That is another good reason to remove the current version of timidity unless someone steps up to introduce the new upstream release. So, overall, there are three very good reasons to remove the current timidity version from Debian - each of which is sufficient reason for removal on their own. Someone needs to adopt it and get your new release uploaded real soon now. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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