Gentoo Developer Relations Undertakers

1.  Project Description

The Developer Relations Undertakers project handles developer retirement, both when developers announce their retirement as well as due to developer inactivity.

2.  Developers

All developers can be reached by e-mail using nickname@gentoo.org.

3.  Steps to retire a developer

1. Check CVS and bugzilla activity:
   • You can use the history subcommand of cvs, which will display you the activity of the developer in question across all CVS repositories. Use it like this: cvs history -c -u dev | sed 's/^.\{2\}//g' | sort | less
   • Additionally we have the CVS slacker report mails from flycatcher (aka cvs.gentoo.org) to retirement@gentoo.org the 1st of every month
   • Check http://bugs.gentoo.org/custom_userhistory.cgi?matchstr=DEVELOPER@gentoo.org to see the last few bugzilla activities. Activity is defined very broadly in this case so commenting, changing resolution, CC'ing etc. all count as activity. You need to look at each of those bugs to decide if the activity is related to development.
   • Alternatively, you can use this script(deprecated) to view the cia.vc and bugzilla activity for a specific developer.
2. Try talking to the project lead(s), if the developer looks inactive. He might be active in ways we can't determine easily. Put in some effort to contact the developer (either IRC or via email) before starting the actual retirement process. When sending an email to the developer in question, make sure you tell him, that he might get retired due to being inactive. Also, whenever sending emails in undertakers business, CC retirement@gentoo.org.
3. If the developer is inactive for more than two months, send him the first mail asking him to consider removing himself from packages that he is not interested to maintain anymore. Those packages should be announced as unmaintained to the gentoo-dev mailing list and re-assigned to maintainer-needed@gentoo.org until another developer or proxy-maintainer steps up and take care of them.
4. Then search for the New Developer bug, if the developer predates recruitment bugs (there was no recruitment bug), open a new bug. Change Summary to Packages reassignment: Full Name (nickname). Reassign the bug to retirement@gentoo.org(Retirement Admin) and change Status Whiteboard to first-mail-sent: yy-mm-dd. Make sure the developer is CC'ed on the bug. Once situation is clarified, close the bug as FIXED.
5. After four months from the first e-mail, if you still believe the developer is inactive, reopen the Packages reassignment bug. Change Summary to Retire: Full Name (nickname) and change Status Whiteboard to second-mail-sent: yy-mm-dd.
6. Send him the second mail and wait a minimum of one month, to give the developer adequate time to respond on the bug or to the mail. If you get no response during that period, send the third mail. Don't forget to change Status Whiteboard to third-mail-sent and to update the date there. Remember that retirement@gentoo.org must be CC'ed ALL mails and ALL responses must be forwarded there.
7. Consider any responses carefully. We're supposed to help Gentoo (in this case by keeping the developer base "clean"), not to retire as many developers as possible.
8. Close the bug if the developer is still considered active
9. If the developer doesn't respond within six months or is otherwise still considered inactive, state that on the bug and ask Infra to start retirement process). Also make sure you change the Status Whiteboard to infra-retire yyyy-mm-dd.
10. Retirement procedure looks like this:
    • Clean up the tree and herds from the yet-retired developer. Use the retire.py script (which is available in gentoo/xml/htdocs/proj/en/devrel/undertakers/scripts/) for that purpose, but make sure to review its output before committing!
    • Clean up any metadata.xml the developer in question might be mentioned in. This is accomplished by running retire.py --metadata-dev devname /path/to/gentoo-x86. Review the output, and apply it to current CVS, but make sure you cvs up before applying it.
    • Clean up herds.xml in proj/en/metastructure/herds/. Remove the developer in question from any herds he might be listed in. To find those, you might want to run this: retire.py --herds /path/to/userinfo.xml /path/to/herds.xml. That will show you the developers listed as retired in userinfo.xml which are still listed in herds.xml.
    • Clean up any project pages the developer may be listed in. Just make sure you don't erase them completely (for example userrel/archives/soc/ is fine). Use retire.py --project /path/to/userinfo.xml /path/to/xml/proj/en/ to find any stale entries.
    • Search for all NEW and REOPEN bugs assigned to the retired developer on Gentoo Bugzilla and reassign them to herds or projects the package belongs to. Information to whom reassign can be obtained from metadata.xml file of that package.
    • Wait for Infrastructure, Planet and Forums admins to retire developer in question before proceeding further.
    • If he has an account on wiki.gentoo.org, add a comment (if there is not one already) with his nickname and CC wiki@gentoo.org.
    • Check group membership on cvs.gentoo.org to ensure retired devs are dropped from all groups by running the search-retired-devs.sh script.
    • Remove access to #gentoo-dev (access is either removed completely or changed to voice depending on whether they ask for it or they're still considered active and helpful in the channel). Ask a freenode staffer to reset the cloak to a non-gentoo one.
11. Close the bug once all of the above steps are finished!

4.  Pending Retirements

The following table lists all the Gentoo developers that are currently being processed by the retirement team.