Package Orphaning Process

This page contains instructions for working with orphan packages as specified in Policy for Orphan and Retired Packages.

Orphaning Procedure

  1. (Optional) If the package has co-maintainers, contact them to ask whether one of them wants to take over ownership of the package.

    The current list of maintainers can be found in the Users & Groups tab of the setting for the package repo. The URL will look something like this: https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/PACKAGE_NAME/settings.

    If somebody wants to take the package, skip the rest of the procedure and give it to them as follows:

    1. Remove yourself under Users and Groups, unless you want to remain as a co-maintainer.

    2. Reset your watch status, unless you still want to be notified about new package bugs.

  2. Click the ✋ Orphan button on the left, fill requested information, and click Update.

  3. Announce on the devel mailing list which package you orphaned, so that others have a chance to take over as maintainer.

After completing these steps, the package is orphaned. Package’s open bug reports are automatically assigned to the orphan user, extras-orphan@fedoraproject.org. If nobody takes over the orphan package in six weeks, it is automatically retired by Release Engineering.

Claiming Ownership of an Orphaned Package

Ownership of an orphaned package can be claimed by any interested packager at any time. They then become responsible for the package.

  1. Check why the package was orphaned by checking the note on the left menu of the package’s main page at Package Sources, and looking for the email at devel.

  2. Announce on devel which packages you want to take over.

  3. Log in to Package Sources. On the page with the orphaned package, click the ✋ Take button in the left column. If the button does not work, submit a ticket to the Release Engineering team, stating which package you want to claim and that the button did not work.

All open bug reports for the package in Bugzilla are automatically reassigned to you.

If you are not in the packager group yet, but want to claim ownership of an orphaned package, you must Get Sponsored into the Packager Group first.

Lists of Orphan and Retired Packages

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