Project:Retirement

The Developer Relations Undertakers project handles developer retirement, both when developers announce their retirement as well as due to developer inactivity.

Project Description
The Developer Relations Undertakers project handles developer retirement, both when developers announce their retirement as well as due to developer inactivity.

Steps to retire a developer

 * 1) Check CVS and bugzilla activity:
 * You can use the  subcommand of  , which will display you the activity of the developer in question across all CVS repositories. Use it like this:
 * Additionally we have the CVS slacker report mails from flycatcher (aka cvs.gentoo.org) to  the 1st of every month
 * Check http://bugs.gentoo.org/custom_userhistory.cgi?matchstr=DEVELOPER@gentoo.org to see the last few bugzilla activities. Activity is defined very broadly in this case so commenting, changing resolution, CC'ing etc. all count as activity. You need to look at each of those bugs to decide if the activity is related to development.
 * Alternatively, you can use this script(deprecated) to view the cia.vc and bugzilla activity for a specific developer.


 * 1) Try talking to the project lead(s), if the developer looks inactive. He might be active in ways we can't determine easily. Put in some effort to contact the developer (either IRC or via email) before starting the actual retirement process. When sending an email to the developer in question, make sure you tell him, that he might get retired due to being inactive. Also, whenever sending emails in undertakers business, CC.
 * 2) If the developer is inactive for more than two months, send him the first mail asking him to consider removing himself from packages that he is not interested to maintain anymore. Those packages should be announced as unmaintained to the   mailing list and re-assigned to maintainer-needed@gentoo.org until another developer or proxy-maintainer steps up and take care of them.
 * 3) Then search for the New Developer bug, if the developer predates recruitment bugs (there was no recruitment bug), open a new bug. Change   to Packages reassignment: Full Name (nickname) . Reassign the bug to   (Retirement Admin) and change   to first-mail-sent: yy-mm-dd . Make sure the developer is CC'ed on the bug. Once situation is clarified, close the bug as FIXED.
 * 4) After four months from the first e-mail, if you still believe the developer is inactive, reopen the Packages reassignment bug. Change   to Retire: Full Name (nickname) and change   to second-mail-sent: yy-mm-dd.
 * 5) Send him the second mail and wait a minimum of one month, to give the developer adequate time to respond on the bug or to the mail. If you get no response during that period, send the third mail . Don't forget to change Status Whiteboard to third-mail-sent and to update the date there. Remember that   must be CC'ed ALL mails and ALL responses must be forwarded there.
 * 6) Consider any responses carefully. We're supposed to help Gentoo (in this case by keeping the developer base "clean"), not to retire as many developers as possible.
 * 7) Close the bug if the developer is still considered active
 * 8) If the developer doesn't respond within six months or is otherwise still considered inactive, state that on the bug and ask Infra to start retirement process ). Also make sure you change the   to.
 * 9) Retirement procedure looks like this:
 * Clean up the tree and herds from the yet-retired developer. Use the  script (which is available in gentoo/xml/htdocs/proj/en/devrel/undertakers/scripts/ ) for that purpose, but make sure to review its output before committing!
 * Clean up any  the developer in question might be mentioned in. This is accomplished by running   . Review the output, and apply it to current CVS, but make sure you   before applying it.
 * Clean up  in  . Remove the developer in question from any herds he might be listed in. To find those, you might want to run this:   . That will show you the developers listed as retired in   which are still listed in.
 * Clean up any project pages the developer may be listed in. Just make sure you don't erase them completely (for example is fine). Use   to find any stale entries.
 * Search for all NEW and REOPEN bugs assigned to the retired developer on Gentoo Bugzilla and reassign them to herds or projects the package belongs to. Information to whom reassign can be obtained from file of that package.
 * Wait for Infrastructure, Planet and Forums admins to retire developer in question before proceeding further.
 * If he has an account on wiki.gentoo.org, add a comment (if there is not one already) with his nickname and CC.
 * Check group membership on cvs.gentoo.org to ensure retired devs are dropped from all groups by running the  script.
 * Remove access to  (access is either removed completely or changed to voice depending on whether they ask for it or they're still considered active and helpful in the channel). Ask a freenode staffer to reset the cloak to a non-gentoo one.


 * 1) Close the bug once all of the above steps are finished!

Pending Retirements
Click here to see all the pending retirements.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the following authors and editors for their contributions to this guide:


 * Bryan Østergaard
 * rane
 * hwoarang
 * pacho