[xml/sgml] Bug#474126: linuxdoc-tools: ITO: intent to orphan

[Agustin Martin]

retitle 474126 linuxdoc-tools: ITA: intent to adopt
thanks

On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 05:15:07PM +0200, Daniel Leidert wrote:

> I don't want take over it but I would like to encourage you to improve
> your skills and to maintain it from within the debian-xml-sgml group and
> its repository :) If necessary I can help with DTD and C questions.

Thanks for the reply.

I also think that the best is, whoever maintains this package, doing it from
within the debian-xml-sgml group. Unless current maintainer wants to
continue maintaining it I will happily take care of this package. 

Sano, are you willing to continue maintaining this package? I am renaming
the bug title to a ITA in the meantime.

Actually, the only C stuff there is rtf2rtf, sgmlpre and nsgmls, building
with only some minor compilation warning. I would not expect them to fail,
although cannot warrant that a future gcc might not trigger a FTBFS.
However, they passed all recent gcc transitions without problems, so seem
robust enough.

Regarding the DTD, I also do not expect big problems. Since linuxdoc
format is frozen for years nothing new is to be added, so there should
not be grave problems regarding the DTD. The only thing is that I am not
sure about how file location fits current sgml policy. However nobody
complained in years, so should not be that bad.

Most other things are perl, looking to me ancient perl. I tried to make
things more readable in the files where I worked more extensively (like
fmt_txt.pl) and would like to continue with this.

Regarding the repository, I keep under CVS control changes after 0.9.21,
corresponding to previous NMU (0.1 amd 0.2) and all my further NMU
(0.3-0.11) using 0.9.21 as base.

*Sano*, if you have the package history under CVS control is interesting
if we can try to join everything together, so the full history is preserved.
Please let me know ASAP if so.

Regarding VCS of choice, seems that the debian-xml-sgml group is currently
using subversion (correct me otherwise). If you are considering migration
from subversion to something else (git, ...) let me know, so I directly try
to do things for it. I am doing most of my work in old CVS, although
maintain one package in subversion and I am recently trying git, with a
preliminary good feeling. So using subversion in the central repository
should not be a problem. I could even use git-svn to interact with the
central subversion repository if I finally prefer git.

> > The bad news are that there is no upstream. The good news are that the
> > package is stable, seems to have no major problems, so should not be a
> > maintenance problem.
> 
> If enough people are using it and someone is able to maintain it, there
> should be no reason for a removal.

I think it is is a nice package for simple things, and the fact that is
actively used in the LDP for that reason makes more interesting to keep in
good shape (As a matter of fact, people from the LDP contributed some
patches and feedback for some of my NMUs).

So, I am formally asking to be added to the debian-xml-sgml group.

I have some minor things pending to upload once checked that the large
fmt_txt.pl changes added in 0.9 and later  NMU caused no problems, so this
could be used to change package ownership to the group and release 0.9.22.

-- 
Agustin
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