openSUSE:Factory drop policy
Usual reasons to drop a package
There can be several reasons to drop a package. Usually, this happens because the software is:
- of no interest to the package maintainer anymore (or lack of time from the maintainer)
- depending on deprecated technologies we're removing, and no one is porting the code
- dead upstream, and no one is willing to become upstream
- impossible to maintain in a released product with our security policy
- not stable enough
It's important to keep in mind that dropping the package might not be the only solution: there could be other people willing to step up to help, or to port the code, or to become the new upstream maintainer, etc. So this is something you will usually want to check first.
Checking if others want to maintain the package
Especially in case you are not interested in the package anymore, it's nice to ask other contributors if someone wants to step up and replace you as maintainer of the package. Use the opensuse-packaging mailing list for that.
Checking if others need the package
While it might be your opinion, as the current maintainer, that the package should be dropped, things can be more complicated as other packages might need your package to build or work fine. It is therefore important to first check if there's any BuildRequires/Requires for your package in openSUSE:Factory.
How to remove a package from Factory
Just file a delete request for the package in openSUSE:Factory.
Keep in mind that the package will still exist in released versions of openSUSE, and therefore should still be maintained for those.
Backup of the dropped package
On removal of the package from openSUSE:Factory, a copy of the last version will be created in the openSUSE:Dropped project so that people can take the package again in the future, if needed.
How to restore a dropped package
It's simply a matter of restoring the package from openSUSE:Dropped. Follow the process described to add a package to Factory.