Gentoo currently has a number of packages that lack maintainers and are broken in one or more ways. Due to the large number of packages that exhibit this behavior in the gentoo package database the tree cleaner subproject was created. The overall goal of this subproject is to reduce the number of unmaintained and broken packages in the tree. This is accomplished by either finding a maintainer for the package, fixing the package, or removing the package from the package database.
To find and remove broken and unmaintained packages from the tree.
| Developer | Nickname | Role |
| Jeremy Olexa | darkside | Lead |
| Steve Dibb | beandog | Member ( GPNL ) |
| Samuli Suominen | ssuominen | Member |
| Victor Ostorga | vostorga | Member |
All developers can be reached by e-mail using nickname@gentoo.org.
The TreeCleaners project has the following subprojects:
| Project | Lead | Description |
| Gentoo Packages that Need Lovin' | Steve Dibb | The GPNL is a website that is currently under development to list packages that need maintainers, and dynamically query for common QA bugs. |
The TreeCleaner project is available at treecleaner@gentoo.org
6. Gentoo Packages that Need Lovin' (GPNL)
Removing a package isn't the only solution offered by the tree cleaner project. The project strives to maintain a list of packages that have no maintainer. This package list is created by two methods. One is to look in the tree for packages lacking a metadata.xml file. The second is to look at packages assigned to maintainer-needed in metadata.xml. The final method involves looking on bugs for bugs assigned to maintainer-needed. All of these methods are combined to create the Gentoo Packages that Need Lovin' (GPNL) list. This exists to encourage users and developers to locate neglected packages and fix any problems that they may have. The GPNL is still under active development.
All ebuilds, including deleted ones, are available from the web interface to Gentoo's CVS repository, which you can find at http://sources.gentoo.org/viewcvs.py/gentoo-x86/. Ebuilds and directories that have been removed will appear in the Attic, and can be accessed by clicking the (Show <n> dead files) link at the top of the folder view. You can then download any ebuilds you may need from ViewCVS and place them in a local overlay, where they can be installed as normal. Any distribution files will remain on Gentoo's mirrors for at least two weeks after the ebuild is removed from the tree, and even after removal from our mirrors they will in most cases continue to be available from the original source.
I'm glad you like that package, however without a maintainer it sits stale in the tree. Maintaining a package involves a time commitment, even if your ebuild you submitted to bugzilla works, or your patch works, it takes time fixing other bugs, testing the package, checking for updates, and so on. Sometimes there is no one to take this resposibility on. If you are confident there are enough users for the package, feel free to take it to Gentoo Sunrise once the ebuild has been removed from the tree (not before mind, their policy states you can't have something in sunrise and the tree, so be patient). For more information on Sunrise please see Project Sunrise's page and #gentoo-sunrise on chat.freenode.net.
The TreeCleaner Project currently have two docs: