[Haskell-cafe] Hackage checking maintainership of packages

[Niklas Hambüchen]

I don't think that activity in the repo has too much to do with 
something being maintained.

Maintainance is a thing humans commit to, so the question of whether 
something is maintained should be a question to a human.

I often push a quick build failure fix for my packages, some of which I 
would still in not want to call "maintained".

On Mon 06 May 2013 10:57:49 SGT, Clark Gaebel wrote:
> If there's a github link in the package url, it could check the last
> update to the default branch. If it's more than 6 months ago, an email
> to the maintainer of "is this package maintained?" can be sent. If
> there's no reply in 3 months, the package is marked as unmaintained.
> If the email is ever responded to or a new version is uploaded, the
> package can be un-marked.
>   - Clark
> On Sunday, May 5, 2013, Lyndon Maydwell wrote:
>
>     I've got it!
>
>     The answer was staring us in the face all along... We can just
>     introduce backwards-compatibility breaking changes into GHC-head
>     and see if the project fails to compile for x-time! That way we're
>     SURE it's unmaintained.
>
>     I'll stop sending emails now.
>
>
>     On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 10:44 AM, Clark Gaebel
>     <cgaebel at uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>
>         If there's a github link in the package url, it could check
>         the last update to the default branch. If it's more than 6
>         months ago, an email to the maintainer of "is this package
>         maintained?" can be sent. If there's no reply in 3 months, the
>         package is marked as unmaintained. If the email is ever
>         responded to or a new version is uploaded, the package can be
>         un-marked.
>
>           - Clark
>
>
>         On Sunday, May 5, 2013, Lyndon Maydwell wrote:
>
>             But what if the package is already perfect?
>
>             Jokes aside, I think that activity alone wouldn't be a
>             good indicator.
>
>
>             On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Conrad Parker
>             <conrad at metadecks.org> wrote:
>
>                 On 6 May 2013 09:42, Felipe Almeida Lessa
>                 <felipe.lessa at gmail.com> wrote:
>                 > Just checking the repo wouldn't work.  It may still
>                 have some activity
>                 > but not be maintained and vice-versa.
>
>                 ok, how about this: if the maintainer feels that their
>                 repo and
>                 maintenance activities are non-injective they can
>                 additionally provide
>                 an http-accessible URL for the maintenance activity.
>                 Hackage can then
>                 do an HTTP HEAD request on that URL and use the
>                 Last-Modified response
>                 header as an indication of the last time of
>                 maintenance activity. I'm
>                 being a bit tongue-in-cheek, but actually this would
>                 allow you to
>                 point hackage to a blog as evidence of maintenance
>                 activity.
>
>                 I like the idea of just pinging the code repo.
>
>                 Conrad.
>
>                 > On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 2:19 PM, Doug Burke
>                 <dburke.gw at gmail.com> wrote:
>                 >>
>                 >> On May 5, 2013 7:25 AM, "Petr Pudlák"
>                 <petr.mvd at gmail.com> wrote:
>                 >>>
>                 >>> Hi,
>                 >>>
>                 >>> on another thread there was a suggestion which
>                 perhaps went unnoticed by
>                 >>> most:
>                 >>>
>                 >>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>                 >>>> From: Niklas Hambüchen <mail at nh2.me>
>                 >>>> Date: 2013/5/4
>                 >>>> ...
>                 >>>> I would even be happy with newhackage sending
>                 every package maintainer a
>                 >>>> quarterly question "Would you still call your
>                 project X 'maintained'?"
>                 >>>> for each package they maintain; Hackage could
>                 really give us better
>                 >>>> indications concerning this.
>                 >>>
>                 >>>
>                 >>> This sounds to me like a very good idea. It could
>                 be as simple as "If you
>                 >>> consider yourself to be the maintainer of package
>                 X please just hit reply
>                 >>> and send." If Hackage doesn't get an answer, it'd
>                 just would display some
>                 >>> red text like "This package seems to be
>                 unmaintained since D.M.Y."
>                 >>>
>                 >>> Best regards,
>                 >>> Petr
>                 >>>
>                 >>
>                 >> For those packages that give a repository, a query
>                 could be done
>                 >> automatically to see when it was last updated. It's
>                 not the same thing as
>                 >> 'being maintained', but is less annoying for those
>                 people with many packages
>                 >> on hackage.
>                 >>
>                 >> Doug
>                 >>
>                 >>
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>                 >>
>                 >
>                 >
>                 >
>                 > --
>                 > Felipe.
>                 >
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