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Home > Archive > PHP PEAR Questions and Answers > August 2005 > Unmaintained packages, a first step









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Author Unmaintained packages, a first step
Arnaud Limbourg

2005-08-09, 5:02 pm

Hi all,

I played a bit with the REST stuff that Greg added recently to PEAR. The
idea is to allow an easy view of potentially stlae packages (i.e.: no
release in a while). The script generating this page is largely inspired
by Greg's REST code found at
http://cvs.php.net/co.php/pear-core/PEAR/REST/10.php. It is pretty
well-behaved and should not put more burden on pearweb than a regular
pear install.

You will find the page at the following address:

http://www.limbourg.com/files/pear_packages.html

For each state there are two tables. The first table (with a red
caption) shows packages without any release in the past 180 days (~6
months). Every table is sortable by clicking on the header, have fun
with that.

You may wonder about the use of that. The rationale is that a lot of
packages are not maintained and we need a way to identify those
packages. I think that an indicator of that is the time elapsed since
the last release. Obviously it does not mean that the package is
obsolete, it is one factor among other, for example stable packages are
not released every day and some provide functionality which does not
change (e.g.: HTML_Table).

I hope this can be used as a basis to ask maintainers if they want to
drop the package so we can look for a new maintainer.

I also think it would also makes sense to add a deprecate attribute to
the package.xml file with a free text message to the installer can say
things like "Package deprecated, use Foo instead".

Thoughts/opinions ?

Arnaud.
Greg Beaver

2005-08-10, 4:00 am

Arnaud Limbourg wrote:
> I also think it would also makes sense to add a deprecate attribute to
> the package.xml file with a free text message to the installer can say
> things like "Package deprecated, use Foo instead".


Not here, but this is already supported in the REST schema for package
information. You can move a package to another channel this way as
well. Soon, the installer will actually display a message when
installing such a package, or requesting remote info on it.

Greg
Arnaud Limbourg

2005-08-10, 4:00 am

Greg Beaver wrote:

> Arnaud Limbourg wrote:
>
>
>
> Not here, but this is already supported in the REST schema for package
> information. You can move a package to another channel this way as
> well. Soon, the installer will actually display a message when
> installing such a package, or requesting remote info on it.
>
>

I hadn't thought about another channel, it makes sense. Thanks for the info.

Arnaud.
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