Over the years, with the help of Colin Watson and others, I've handled bug reports for packages that the BTS doesn't know about (either because the package was removed, is in some unofficial repo or because the bug submitter made a typo). I'm looking for someone to take over this activity. I've included more information below on what is involved.
Anyone interested? P.S. Is there a good place in the wiki to add this job description. I think it would be worth to preserve it there for the future. (Please CC since I'm not subscribed to -qa) Job description: When a bug is filed in the BTS for a package that is not in the Debian archive, the bug report is sent to the QA unknown-package alias. The bug report then needs to be handled in an appropriate manner, e.g. reassigned to another package (for example when there's a typo in the package name) or closed (when the package no longer exists in the Debian archive). When a bug report for an unknown package comes in, the following information can be checked to decide what to do about the bug: - Check the NEW queue at http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html and the incoming queue at http://incoming.debian.org The BTS doesn't know about packages in NEW or incoming but bug reports for such packages are worthwhile reports. You can simply bounce a copy of the bug report to the maintainer or reply to the bug and put the maintainer in CC. - Check the list of removed packages at http://ftp-master.debian.org/removals-full.txt If the package was removed from Debian, you can close the bug report saying that the package was removed and why it was removed. - Check the Content file to see if the unknown package name is a valid in an existing package. - Often the package name in the bug report is an obvious typo for an existing package. In that case, you can simply reassign the bug, ideally with a version number (reassign nnnnn package version). - We often get bug reports for linux-image-2.6.xx* packages that no longer exist. They should be reassigned to the linux-2.6 package since they might still be relevant. - We also get a lot of bug reports for packages in the unofficial Debian Multimedia repository at debian-multimedia.org. The best way to handle such reports is to CC the debian-multimedia.org maintainer, Christian Marillat <maril...@debian.org>, and close them with a message that debian-multimedia.org is not an official repo and that you have copied the maintainer. - Finally, if you don't know where the package comes from, you can ask the submitter. Suggest that they run: dpkg -p PACKAGE | grep Maintainer: to see who the maintainer is. -- Martin Michlmayr http://www.cyrius.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-qa-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110529101628.ga32...@jirafa.cyrius.com
