Am 27.03.2011 22:44, schrieb Rich Freeman: > We shouldn't be punishing people for not becoming developers. I don't > want to use a distro that throws up warning messages every few months > because some package I've been using had its developer retire, and I'm > a developer. If it breaks and I care enough about it, I'll rescue it. > If I'm passionate about it, I'll step in before it breaks. Holding > users ransom is not the solution.
Well, but you need some way of communicate that certain packages are w/o a proper maintainer. Why else should someone step up? I, for instance, was quite surprised about the list of m-n packages and seeing that quite some packages I use are on that list. I would never had a look at it without this thread (or are users nowadays supposed to check metadata.xml on a regular basis?). So, why not at least add some elog-like output at the end of an emerge run like "The following installed packages are without maintainer: $LIST. If you want to step up, please see $PROXY_MAINTAINER_URL." And before you state "well - it is enough if someone steps up when it breaks": Even then it might get unnoticed, that the package is unmaintained. I never check thoroughly where the package gets assigned to during bug-wrangling, and I suppose that I'm not alone here. So the only thing one notices is a bug which never gets any response. And this is frustrating. Regarding the pro-active masking/removal: As a user I'd object to this. Please try a less obtrusive path first, like the info output I mentioned above. Seeing that used packages gets masked quite often spawns bad mood (at least in my experience and seeing reactions in forum threads). - René
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
