Bug#1080506: Should cycle-quotes be removed from unstable?

[Helmut Grohne]

Source: cycle-quotes
Severity: serious
Justification: grab attention of maintainer
User: ***@debian.org
Usertags: sidremove

Dear maintainer,

I suggest removing cycle-quotes from Debian for the following reasons:
* It accumulated one RC-bug:
+ #1020192: cycle-quotes: FTBFS with emacs 28: 1 test failed: test-cycle-quotes-triple-quotes
Last modified: 1 year, 2 months

* It is not part of bookworm or trixie and is not a key package.

This bug serves as a pre-removal warning. After one month, the bug will be
reassigned to ftp.debian.org to actually request removal of the package.

In case the package should be kept in unstable, please evaluate each of the
RC-bugs listed above.
* If the bug is meant to prevent the package from entering testing or a stable
release, but this package should stay part of unstable, please add a
usertag:

user ***@debian.org
usertags NNN + sidremove-ignore

* If the bug no longer applies, please close it. If it is closed, check
whether the fixed version is correct and adjust if necessary.

* Is the bug really release-critical? If not, please downgrade.

* If the bug still applies, please send a status update at least once a year.

Once all of the mentioned RC bugs have been acted upon in one way or another,
please close this bug.

In case the package should be removed from unstable, you may reassign this
bug report:

Control: severity -1 normal
Control: retitle -1 RM: cycle-quotes -- RoM; rc-buggy
Control: reassign -1 ftp.debian.org
Control: affects -1 + src:cycle-quotes

Alternatively, you may wait a month and have it reassigned.

In case you disagree with the above, please downgrade this bug below RC
severity. Doing so will also prevent automatic reassignment.

Kind regards

A tool for automatically removing packages from unstable

This bug report has been automatically filed with little human intervention.
If the filing is unclear or in error, don't hesitate to contact
Helmut Grohne <***@subdivi.de> for assistance.

[Helmut Grohne]

Hi David,

Post by Helmut Grohne
Source: cycle-quotes
Severity: serious
Justification: grab attention of maintainer

For the record, this "justification" is pretty infuriating, no matter
how well thought the rest of the message (which I am now not going to
read) might be.

I note that you are the first one giving this feedback. The context here
is that a package receiving such a report looks neglected and the bug
report actually threatens to remove the package from unstable. The
intention of using serious here is making sure that this pre-removal
notification is not being missed and as a result we remove a package
that should be kept. Do you think that severity serious is the wrong
tool for this job? If not, can you suggest a better way of justifying
it?

Helmut

[Sean Whitton]

Post by Helmut Grohne
Hi David,

Post by Helmut Grohne
Source: cycle-quotes
Severity: serious
Justification: grab attention of maintainer

For the record, this "justification" is pretty infuriating, no matter
how well thought the rest of the message (which I am now not going to
read) might be.

I note that you are the first one giving this feedback. The context here
is that a package receiving such a report looks neglected and the bug
report actually threatens to remove the package from unstable. The
intention of using serious here is making sure that this pre-removal
notification is not being missed and as a result we remove a package
that should be kept. Do you think that severity serious is the wrong
tool for this job? If not, can you suggest a better way of justifying
it?

That's simply not what the serious notification means.

Also, this package has no maintainer: #

[Sean Whitton]

This was a half-written draft that I did not intend to send. Apologies.

Post by Sean Whitton
That's simply not what the serious notification means.
Also, this package has no maintainer: #

[Helmut Grohne]

Hi Sean,

I know that downgrading the bug will cancel the reassignment. That is a
side-effect of my downgrade. I am just setting it to what I think is
the correct severity. Correct severities in the BTS matter to me.

Would you be able to give a good reason for keeping the package in
unstable? It poses a non-negligible to QA teams and since it evidently
is not to be included in a stable release I am questioning whether it is
worth that cost.

Helmut

[Sean Whitton]

Hello,

Post by Helmut Grohne
Hi Sean,

I know that downgrading the bug will cancel the reassignment. That is a
side-effect of my downgrade. I am just setting it to what I think is
the correct severity. Correct severities in the BTS matter to me.

Would you be able to give a good reason for keeping the package in
unstable? It poses a non-negligible to QA teams and since it evidently
is not to be included in a stable release I am questioning whether it is
worth that cost.

I take that non-negligible cost seriously.

I do not have such a good reason.

My issue was with the severity and the justification for it.

[Helmut Grohne]

Hi David and Sean,

Post by Helmut Grohne
Source: cycle-quotes
Severity: serious
Justification: grab attention of maintainer

For the record, this "justification" is pretty infuriating, no matter
how well thought the rest of the message (which I am now not going to
read) might be.

As a result of your feedback, I have changed the autoremover. It will
now file pre-removal bugs at important severity and recommend tagging
them wontfix rather than downgrading them and then consider the wontfix
tag rather than the severity as disablement. For old bugs (such as this
one) the severity gate will be checked in addition.

Please let me point out that I have discussed the removal strategy
(though not the template) on debian-devel and received positive
feedback. In order to react to feedback such as yours (and earlier), I
have sent reports in relatively small batches such that future reports
will benefit from this feedback.

I hope that this alleviates your concerns about the autoremoval method
and lets us focus on the suggested removal.

Thanks for your understanding

Helmut

[Sean Whitton]

Hello,

Post by Helmut Grohne
As a result of your feedback, I have changed the autoremover. It will
now file pre-removal bugs at important severity and recommend tagging
them wontfix rather than downgrading them and then consider the wontfix
tag rather than the severity as disablement. For old bugs (such as this
one) the severity gate will be checked in addition.

Sound good to me.

Post by Helmut Grohne
Please let me point out that I have discussed the removal strategy
(though not the template) on debian-devel and received positive
feedback. In order to react to feedback such as yours (and earlier), I
have sent reports in relatively small batches such that future reports
will benefit from this feedback.

I understand. These all seem like good decisions.

Post by Helmut Grohne
I hope that this alleviates your concerns about the autoremoval method
and lets us focus on the suggested removal.

It does, thank you.

I note that cycle-quotes has actually been orphaned for four years --
see #904238. So I think you can decide to remove it on your own.

(I think this suggests your script should look at wnpp bugs which
haven't seen uploads to update metadata, to save you some work.)

[Helmut Grohne]

Hi Sean,

Post by Sean Whitton

Post by Helmut Grohne
I hope that this alleviates your concerns about the autoremoval method
and lets us focus on the suggested removal.

It does, thank you.

Great!

Post by Sean Whitton
I note that cycle-quotes has actually been orphaned for four years --
see #904238. So I think you can decide to remove it on your own.
(I think this suggests your script should look at wnpp bugs which
haven't seen uploads to update metadata, to save you some work.)

I intentionally do not consider the orphaned status as a criterion.
There are a number of well-maintained and yet orphaned packages. I am
using the orphaned status myself to ease collaboration on some packages
while still caring for them and the fact that you replied to this bug
here indicates that you also somewhat care about cycle-quotes.

So the last successful build of cycle-quotes was in 2020. Do you see
yourself working on the FTBFS anytime soon?

If not, I suggest raising the severity of the pre-removal bug to RC
again (using the old semantics) and giving everyone else a chance to fix
it before proceeding to remove it in a month.

Helmut

[Sean Whitton]

Hello,

Post by Helmut Grohne
Hi Sean,

Post by Sean Whitton

Post by Helmut Grohne
I hope that this alleviates your concerns about the autoremoval method
and lets us focus on the suggested removal.

It does, thank you.

Great!

Post by Sean Whitton
I note that cycle-quotes has actually been orphaned for four years --
see #904238. So I think you can decide to remove it on your own.
(I think this suggests your script should look at wnpp bugs which
haven't seen uploads to update metadata, to save you some work.)

I intentionally do not consider the orphaned status as a criterion.

Right, my point was that you can take the decision on your own.

Post by Helmut Grohne
There are a number of well-maintained and yet orphaned packages. I am
using the orphaned status myself to ease collaboration on some packages
while still caring for them and the fact that you replied to this bug
here indicates that you also somewhat care about cycle-quotes.

Hmm. I think we understand the state differently. I think it's
important that someone can totally give up responsibility for volunteer
work. That's why I orphaned this package. I don't want to take any
decisions about it. But from my perspective you are free to.