On 9/14/26 08:08, [email protected] wrote:
Hello,
> Let's move to now. A user named Navigator has uploaded the same
(broken) package and he's asking to become the new maintainer [6]. Do
you plan to fix this package using a valid URL where to download the
sources or can I give the package sofa to the user requesting to
become the maintainer?
Thank you for the summary and explanations and overall patience with
me. All this happened at the worst possible moment for me work-wise.
As the website was responding fine, I did not understand the "dead
source" message in particular as I would have expected a simple
message from qubeck for a broken link rather than a deletion request.
At any rate, I looked again, this time more carefully, and I see that
the path differs slightly
(https://www.iausofa.org/s/sofa_c-20231011tar.gz vs
https://www.iausofa.org/sofa_c-20231011tar.gz
<https://www.iausofa.org/s/sofa_c-20231011tar.gz>). Naturally I can
fix this easily if the package is sent back to me. Thank you very much!
Regards,
Médéric Boquien
I agree that orphan/deletion requests and even the flagging process can
be experienced as hostile when you're maintaining packages.
I had quite a few outdated packages a while ago, I'll admit. So it's not
like I myself was doing a good job at that time.
But then I received around ~10 emails at once about out-of-date flags,
orphan and deletion requests. I even unflagged a few packages that I
started to update already, only to have them flagged again within a few
minutes. This particularly felt very hostile.
The whole process is very un-human. You only get some automated
notifications with minimal words. And while there's a quick and easy way
to file a request, there's no quick or easy way to respond to them. The
email you receive doesn't even indicate how to respond to the request,
it doesn't mention any grace period, and it is sent with "Reply-to:
[email protected]".
The person who flagged my packages and filed orphan/deletion requests
may just have been running some script. And I appreciate AUR cleanups.
But the way this gets to the maintainer is definitely not nice. I think
the whole process would be hugely improved if you can respond directly
to requests on the AUR website, rather than having to subscribe to a
high volume mailinglist full of automated messages. But at the very
least the automated emails could have a link to a wiki page explaining
these procedures.
And please, please, don't reply with something "you're a maintainer,
it's your responsibility to be informed of procedures and how to respond
to AUR requests" or something else that just boils down to "deal with
it". Sure, people should read, but we are all humans. Even people who
maintain software packages are usually people. So please don't just
dismiss this kind of feedback out of hand.
Kind regards,
Maarten de Vries
