Package: wnpp Severity: normal TL;DR → I need somebody to help me with Cherokee, and I intend to stop maintaining it (i.e. orphan it) after Wheezy is released.
I have been maintaining Cherokee for quite a long time — I packaged the initial version sitting together with the upstream author while at a conference in Bolivia, back in 2004, and did the first upload to Debian in 2006. The package description is: Cherokee is a very fast, flexible and easy to configure Web Server. It supports the widespread technologies nowadays: FastCGI, SCGI, PHP, CGI, TLS and SSL encrypted connections, Virtual hosts, Authentication, on the fly encoding, Apache compatible log files, HTTP Load Balancing, Data Base Balancing, SSI, Reverse HTTP Proxy and much more. . Cherokee also provides an easy to use configuration interface that allows one to configure the server from top to bottom without having to edit a text configuration file. After being a very quiet package for some time, it entered a phase of quick development, and saw eight major versions (and 82 upstream versions in total) over five years. Right now, it seems development speed has slowed down again. Cherokee is not a very complex package; although it generates 16 binary packages, its build and installation logic are quite straightforward. The package is quite a typical DH-based one. Interaction with the upstream developers is a gift, it's one of the swiftest packages I've seen — They are most responsive, and most interested in having it packaged for Debian. There is an important difference in our postures, however — A common one: They are interested in supporting the latest versions, but not as much in giving support to older releases. I have been requested several times to push the latest release to backports.debian.org, but have failed to do so. Having the upstream project leader (Álvaro López) listed as a co-maintainer, and having Leonel Núñez as an active co-maintainer as well, why do I request an adopter for the cherokee package instead of leaving it just for them? Because of the work focus. I cannot provide proper support for older releases, as I am not quite literate in C and the (very few) patches I have submitted to them end up being worse than the bug I'm treating, and their main focus is basically providing newer versions and prompting the users to upgrade. Leonel's work has been quite useful, but as I have repeatedly told him, it is often limited to a "make it compile and ship it" stance — Again, due to a different focus. I expect to hand this package over to a DD or DM, so no explicit sponsoring is needed. Álvaro is since recently a Canonical employee — Of course, I don't know much about his position there, but if you are also related to Ubuntu, you might find extra points in interacting with a co-worker. Cherokee currently has an open security bug, but before it, since three versions ago (1.2.100) has given several FTBFS in several platforms (during the build tests — The binary itself builds correctly, but might be performing in a buggy way). I have been unable to follow up in a responsible way to the bugs. IN SHORT, MY REQUEST: -------------------- I am sending now this "Request For Adoption" bug. I intend to keep maintaining Cherokee the best way I can (which as can be seen is not too good) until the next Debian Stable release, and if no new maintainer steps up by then, will flag it as Orphaned. Thank you very much, -- Gunnar Wolf • gw...@gwolf.org • (+52-55)5623-0154 / 1451-2244
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