Project:Proxy Maintainers

Proxy maintainers is a group of developers maintaining abandoned packages on behalf of Gentoo users.

Project Description
Gentoo currently has quite a few packages that lack a maintainer. To prevent treecleaners from removing those packages, a maintainer has to be found as soon as possible. The overall goal of this project is to act as a primary contact point between developers and users who want to maintain abandoned packages. Users are more than welcome to contact us and express their interest in maintaining a package assigned to 'maintainer-needed@gentoo.org'.

Project Goals
To enhance the user-developer cooperation in maintaining packages.

Herds
The Proxy Maintainers project maintains the following herds:

Contact
The Proxy Maintainers project is available at

How do I know which packages are orphaned?
Treecleaners maintain an up-to-date list of orphaned packages. Choose your favorite package and contact us to express your interest.

Enthusiasm
Proxied Maintainers should be interested in the packages that they are maintaining. By becoming a Proxied Maintainer you are essentially the person in charge of that package in Gentoo. When users have questions regarding a package and how it works in Gentoo, you and will be the person that those questions are directed towards. We would like you to enjoy the maintaince and not feel as though it is a chore. To that end we are looking for enthusiastic people.

Teamwork
Your work will be reviewed by your a member of the team for violations of Gentoo QA policy; much of the policy is based more on common sense and less on specific rules. If your work does not meet QA your, one of us will notify you of where this occurs and will help you fix the problems to ensure that you work meets guidelines and can be included in the Gentoo package repository. Please do not take offense to these suggestions; all criticism should be intended as constructive criticism.

Interest
Similarly in the vein above, don't Proxy-Maintain a package you know very little about unless you are dead sure you can get up to speed on it. For many packages this is not a big problem (many are quite small). However for larger applications and/or libraries it is important to have prior knowledge about the package in question. Bugs about the package will be directed toward you (and also your Commiter). However as Proxied-Maintainer you are responsible for responding to the bugs with patches/comments/etc. Be prepared to do this.

Patience
Due to the increased number of packages this team maintains, we may forget or be slow in committing your fixes. Please be patient with us; however, don't be afraid to prod every once in a while on the status of your patches or ebuilds if we are not responsive.

QA/Required knowledge and tools
We understand that you may have limited experience with Gentoo ebuilds. Therefore, you should have a brief look on the devmanual and the required tools in order to make sure your ebuild meets our QA standards.

How Proxy Maintainership Works
When you're assigned as proxied maintainer, not much initially happens.

Your Name, and contact details will be injected into the  of the package you've claimed the maintainership of.

For example:

This means when somebody files a bug on the relevant package, you'll be assigned/cc'd the bug, so you'll get an email about the bug.

Then, your job is to resolve the bug as best as you see fit.

Resolving Bugs
If the resolution of the bug requires new ebuilds and patches(after checking the new ebuilds via the standards laid out by the Gentoo Development Guide, and checking them with repoman), then simply attach the solution files to the bug.

Once the solution files are attached, it may be helpful to add to the CC list if is not already done so.

Then a helpful member of the Proxy maintainers team will hopefully eventually see the solution, and double check it for consistency prior to committing it to tree.

Initiating Updates
If you, as proxied maintainer see that theres an available upstream update, you may wish to initiate the update yourself.

To do this, simply file a bug on the relevant package as you would if you were simply a user, and then simply attach relevant ebuilds and patches on the newly opened bug (again, doing as much as you can to make the work for the final commiter as little as possible, ensuring quality work)

Bugs assigned to maintainer-needed@gentoo.org
Developers who participate in this project should encourage users to participate in this project when they notice a open bug for an orphaned package. Such template (or a similar one) can be used to inform users about this project:

Hello,

This package has no maintainer so this bug may go unnoticed for a long time. Gentoo has a dedicated team[1] for assisting users in maintaining orphaned packages. If you are interested in maintaining this package, please contact proxy-maint@gentoo.org.

[1]: https://wiki.gentoo.org/index.php?title=Project:Proxy_Maintainers

Kind regards,



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