Orphaned package that need new maintainers

About Orphan and Retired (Deprecated) Packages

When Fedora maintainers do not want or are not able to maintain a package any longer, they can orphan or retire the package. When they think that the package is still useful for Fedora, they should orphan it. Then other maintainers that are interested in maintaining it, can take ownership of this package. In case the package is no longer useful for Fedora, e.g. because it was renamed, upstream does not exist anymore, then it should be retired. But this is only possible for development releases such as Branched or Rawhide.

Orphaned packages remain in stable releases and are the responsibility of the collective packaging community to maintain.

Retiring packages
Orphan packages will be retired if they remain orphaned for six weeks.

When to orphan and retire your packages
We encourage maintainers considering orphaning their packages to do it as early in the development cycle as possible. Shortly after the prior release is branched is a good time.

Orphaning Procedure

1. Visit your package's Pagure repository, and navigate to the settings for that repo. The URL will look something like this -- https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/PACKAGE_NAME/settings
2. Navigate down to the Give Project section and "give" the project to the "orphan" user.
3. For completeness, under the Users and Groups section, remove yourself from the list as well.
4. Announce on devel which package you orphaned, so that others have a chance to take over as maintainer.

Claiming Ownership of an Orphaned Package

1. Check why the package was orphaned by looking for the email to devel.
2. PkgDB was recently deprecated. For now, you will need to submit a ticket to the Release Engineering team, stating which package you want to claim.
3. Also announce on devel which packages you want to take over.
4. When all the above is complete and Release Engineering has made you the new package owner, reassign and claim all open bug reports for the package in Bugzilla.

Claiming Ownership of a Retired Package

Un-Retiring long-time retired packages
Packages that are retired for Rawhide for more than two weeks need to be reviewed again before they can be un-retired. This is also true for EPEL-only packages.

If you really want to maintain a retired package, you need to be aware that if upstream is dead, fixing release critical bugs, etc becomes your responsibility. This is to ensure the high quality and standards of packaging remain for Fedora package collection. There may be additional issues with retired packages. If possible, consult with the former maintainer for more information. The process is a bit different from unorphaning a package

1. See if you can figure out why the package was retired including searching for information about orphaned packages on devel mailing list or emailing the former maintainer. You can also check dead.package in the SCM (url like: https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/package_name_here/blob/master/f/dead.package)
2. Announce on devel which packages you would like to become the owner of.
3. Retired Fedora packages (master/devel/rawhide branch retired) require a re-review if they are retired for more than two weeks or if there is no previous review of the package. Submit a review request (a new bugzilla ticket) and have the package approved by a reviewer as if it were new to Fedora. See the package review process for more information. To unretire a EPEL branch if the package is still in Fedora, no re-review is required.
4. Request unretirement by filing a releng ticket. Specify all branches that need to be un-retired (inlcuding "master" for Rawhide, unless it is for EPEL only) and include the link to re-review. In this ticket, request that the Release Engineering team unblock the package for the releases that the package should be un-retired for. In this request, clearly specify which branches should be unblocked.
5. Restore the contents in GIT and prepare a new build and update (if necessary).

Lists of Orphan and Retired Packages

• Orphan packages: Rawhide/master, EPEL 5, EPEL 6, EPEL 7
• Deprecated packages (not up to date, a complete list is currently not publicly available).

References

• https://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ticket/1332
• http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2014-08-27/fesco.2014-08-27-17.00.html

EPEL

• https://fedorahosted.org/epel/ticket/4
• http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/epel/2014-10-31/epel.2014-10-31-20.01.html