On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 07:32:01PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote: > It could also be used to create a new "maintenance" facet in debtags. > maint::orphaned, maint::active, maint::passive, maint::help-needed, > maint::need-active-maint
I've been thinking about such a maintenance facet for quite a while, and indeed it's one of the first thing that came to my mind when you posted about the self-assessment. I have been pondering about some self-assessment as well, to feed such a facet. My idea was mainly to allow maintainers to write in debian/control whether they consider the package to be a "fringe" package, or "dead-upstream". "active"/"passive" maintenance is an interesting concept that could be documented in the same place as well. "help-needed" and "need-active-maint" probably wouldn't fit there, as it isn't worth to make a new upload just to document that; also, they're likely to be attributes on which the view of users or other developers is probably more accurate than that of the maintainer. I quite liked the idea of allowing to set such attributes in the control file because, rather than looking like someone putting their nose on how one maintains packages, they are a handy way to document the maintainer's intentions with the package, providing a service to the maintainer: for example, if I mark a package dead-upstream, then people posting wishlist bugs will hopefully take that into account (and reportbug may remind them about it). People adopting a "fringe" package for heavy production will have been warned and hopefully will do some extra testing, and so on. How about something like this? It has the advantage of being fully voluntary, of being a possible value added for the developer, and of not feeling like you're busy doing your best and then someone shows up and instead of offering help asks you to stop and spend time assessing yourself. Ciao, Enrico -- GPG key: 1024D/797EBFAB 2000-12-05 Enrico Zini <enr...@debian.org>
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