[maemo-developers] promotion of orphaned packages

[From: Attila Csipa]

On 14-Dec-11 03:00, Roberto Colistete Jr. wrote:
>> This have been talked about, but stopped at a question - do you really
>> want orphaned packages published in Extras ? If a problem surfaces or a
>> bug gets reported, there is nobody to take care of it, and removal can
>> get really tricky (who gets final say as how broken it has to be to ask
>> Niels to remove it, what if there are other packages depending on the
>> orphaned one, etc).
>
> My opinion : if the orphaned package is in extras-testing for a long
> time (1 month or more) and has a lot of positive votes (12, 2x the 6
> needed to promotion), then it is reasonable that it is stable and well
> tested. So it should be promoted to extras by some Maemo admin member.

Two problems:

1. The apps might have been tested on older versions of dependencies, 
which have been superseeded in the meantime. For example I have 
deprecated QtMobility 1.1, so it doesn't matter how well tested it was, 
that version of mobility is no longer available. Ditto for, say, things 
that depend on the kernel - it might work on one (old) version of the 
power kernel, but not another, etc.

2. It's not about promoting, it's about dealing with it when it's 
already in Extras and it goes wrong (and things do go wrong). If it's an 
orphaned package, there is a lack final authority who can (from a 
technical perspective) say what should be done, should it be a known 
issue, should it be removed, can someone take over, etc, etc. This is 
already a problem in Extras, it's just not too widespread (partially 
because the orphaned packages that could cause problem are stuck in 
testing) so we are in practice ignoring it.

Best regards,
Attila Csipa