Degradation of cool packages

patroclo7 · 2006-05-30 15:31:15

There are now in the community repos some new, very popular packages (e.g. two packages I use very often: esmtp and amsn). Those packages were in extra and are now "orphaned" in community. They also have very few votes, probably since nobody realised they are there and need therefore to be voted.

Is there a reason for this degradation? Do they risk to be expelled in unsupported?

kth5 · 2006-05-30 15:45:47

first of all, i don't use either of those two.

i think they could have been forced out of extra because they created lots of complications. normally - like now with the openssl/db/gnutls updates - a lot of planned rebuilds have to happen. when one packages does not play nice, the rest must wait. in some circumstances this may be against the bleeding edge philosophy. if it should happen frequently with one package and if none of the devs sees any need to keep or maintain those troublemakers, of course the package gets orphaned and moved out of extra. that's a generic explanation though.

Snowman · 2006-05-30 16:03:09

The low number of votes might be due because the community repo was accidently removed a week ago. All votes were lost so probably some users didn't had time to resubmit their votes. If they're out-of-date, flag them. Sometime I update orphan packages. If they have been flagged for several weeks or if there's a problem with them, post on the TUR ML. I don't think they risk being expelled unless no TU want/have time to maintain them.

EDIT: Also, once a pkg is in community repo, users expect that they'll keep their version up-to-date with their ~daily 'pacman -Syu'. It is my opinion that demotion of community pkg to unsupported should be a rare event.

neotuli · 2006-05-30 23:34:25

There are a TON of packages that just about no one (or very few people) use in extra right now, and that no devs are particularly interested in maintaining. I'm going to make it my little project to start moving some of them to community pretty soon, and at the same time I'll be taking a good look at what packages in community might be good cantidates for extra. I'll ask for more opinions when I get around to it..but sometime when school is out (soon).

patroclo7 · 2006-05-31 12:08:53

Cool. I guess that the use of archstats should be stringly advised in order to make these evaluations reliable.

elasticdog · 2006-05-31 21:03:40

patroclo7 wrote:

Cool. I guess that the use of archstats should be stringly advised in order to make these evaluations reliable.

We've had this discussion before, and Archstats really can NOT be counted on as an accurate portrayal of what the community is using...not in it's current state. I doesn't delete old data, nor is it necessarily a statistically accurate representation of what's installed. It would be nice if it were, but it can't be used as a reliable measurement of use.

Arch Linux

#1 2006-05-30 15:31:15

Degradation of cool packages

#2 2006-05-30 15:45:47

Re: Degradation of cool packages

#3 2006-05-30 16:03:09

Re: Degradation of cool packages

#4 2006-05-30 23:34:25

Re: Degradation of cool packages

#5 2006-05-31 12:08:53

Re: Degradation of cool packages

#6 2006-05-31 21:03:40

Re: Degradation of cool packages

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