so long vim maintenance

[James Vega]

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 03:03:44PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> Hi guys, it's a bit of a sad moment, but I've just removed my name
> from the Uploaders list of all vim-related packages I was involved in,
> namely

Thanks for all work you've done!

> The relevant notes for this list are probably the following:
> 
> - for vim itself, please check I've pushed to the right branch my
>   change (it's "debian")

Yup, that's good.

> - for vim-scripts I've also uploaded, fixing an pending issue

Thanks.

> - for vim-addon-manager I've uplodaded to, but ATM no-one is a "human
>   maintainer" (using lintian wording) of it any more. I believe there
>   is still interest from James' point of view to keep the package team
>   maintained. If it is not the case, the package should instead be
>   orphaned.

vim-addon-manager was one of my main targets for DebConf.  Setting up
the local-store of which addons are actually installed will get rid of
two big warts, IMO.

- vim-addons reporting that the user has a broken install of an addon
  (e.g., the color scheme pack) simply because they downloaded a script
  that it contains.

- the inability to gracefully handle upgrades of scripts which have
  files added/removed (#438482 although I have a different approach in
  mind).

With those problems solved, I think vim-addon-manager would be fine in
maintenance mode.

> - finally, it looks like James has remained the only active member of
>   the old team in maintaining Vim; maybe it's time to consider sending
>   out a "call for help" for Vim maintenance?

It would probably be good to have some other eyes, but I think there is
some dead weight in the workload.  I've never really found vim-scripts
(and similar packages) to be particularly useful as something shipped in
a distribution.

- There's not an easy way to keep an eye on when things are outdated,
  although your vim-scripts.pl script does ease that quite a bit.

- The package just becomes a dumping ground for people's pet scripts,
  pushing the burden of keeping them updated onto the packager instead
  of the people that actually find the script useful.

- Like many one-off scripts, they're commonly of poor quality.  That
  is at least part of the motivation for the default-disabled stance of
  vim policy, IMO.

Relegating vim-scripts to an "update when prodded" mode would help as
far as workload goes but that feels like a disservice to our users, even
given my misgivings about the usefulness of the package.

-- 
James
GPG Key: 1024D/61326D40 2003-09-02 James Vega <jamessan at debian.org>
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