[maemo-community] Periodic cleanup of Extras-Devel?

[From: Anderson Lizardo]

On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 7:54 AM, Ed Bartosh <bartosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2010/1/15 Simon Pickering <S.G.Pickering at bath.ac.uk>:
>>
>>> > I think the interface Niels writes will give the developers
>>> > more control so
>>> > some of the control issues will be mitigated.
>>
>> Allowing developers to remove old versions of their packages would be
>> the best plan for cleaning up imo
> I really doubt that. From my point of view it's better to do clean it
> up automatically.
> Why to bother developers if trivial script can do this job faster and
> much better?

I don't know if you saw my e-mail saying that some of PyMaemo's newest
Python bindings (e.g. python-location) are *only* in extras-devel
because no package in extras-testing uses it yet and therefore there
is no version in -testing. Note that does not mean that some developer
is not already using these packages but have not uploaded their
application yet.

We also have some newer versions of the bindings "waiting" to be
pushed to -testing by some application explicitly depending on that
version. The problem is, if no current application developer has a
specific need for these newer versions, they will stay in extras-devel
for a long time still.

What would happen if -devel is automatically purged? Will we have to
re-upload packages every time this happens? How are application
developers writing their applications (not yet pushed to any
repository) supposed to use any of the new bindings in -devel if they
might disappear at any time?

Suggestions are welcome,
-- 
Anderson Lizardo
OpenBossa Labs - INdT
Manaus - Brazil