[Slackbuilds-users] Orphaned Builds FAQ (draft) RFC

[Shahab Vahedi]

July 11, 2026, "B. Watson" wrote:

> I've written a new page for the site, that hopefully explains all
> about orphaned SlackBuilds.
> 
> Currently, it's here:
> 
> https://slackbuilds.org/orphaned_builds_faq.txt

Thank you for taking the time and effort to do this. I have a comment
about the following Q/A:


---
Q: What happens to orphaned builds?

A: Eventually, they get removed from SBo. In the past, orphaned builds have been
   allowed to stay in the repo for months or even years. Starting soon, there will
   be an automatic process that removes orphaned builds after they've been orphaned
   for some number of days (90, 120, or maybe 180; we still haven't decided).
---

Having a package removed automatically after N days, only because it
has no maintainer is a bit strict in my opinion.  There are many
"maintained" packages that don't see an update for periods longer
than N: Maybe the upstream hasn't updated it, maybe the maintainer
did not, what have you.  The only difference between these two cases
is that one of them is labeled "unmaintained" and the other is not.

I think another dimension should be added to this criteria.
Something along the lines of "If there is an open ticket on
this package AND it has been unmaintained for this long".
By "ticket" here, I don't necessarily mean there should be a ticketing
system in place, but more like if the build fails and there's no one
to fix it.

While I was writing this, I noticed that lack of a build failure
is not enough for a good package.  It should also be tested.
Something that we hope maintainers do using their packages routinely.
But is that really the case?

I just have mixed feelings about this.


-Shahab