Javier,
seeing that you do not seem to have been working on cron for a few years
would it be OK with you if I posted something along these lines to
debian-devel:
Request for adoption/request for help: cron
cron's recently active maintainer has removed himself from its
uploaders. So there is currently no active maintainer of cron. It
would be good if cron was actively maintaned. Helping hands or
somebody taking the lead as a cron maintainer would be very welcome!
signed: tpo with Javier's OK
?
Thanks & greetings,
*t
On Tue, 23 Feb 2021, Christian Kastner wrote:
On 2021-02-23 09:03, Tomas Pospisek wrote:
On Mon, 22 Feb 2021, Christian Kastner wrote:
Oh, this is news indeed. I think Javier hasn't been working on for the
last 3 years [1]? So I'd say you Christian have been cron's defacto
maintainer?
While possibly so, I must note that effective with the last upload, I
have removed myself from the Uploaders field, and therefore no longer am
a cron maintainer.
So if the plan to migrate Debian's cron to cronie has been abandoned
(by you) and instead the plan is to drop cron and instead use systemd
timers as the default "cron" mechanism in Debian then I think this
defacto decision should be communicated clearly.
The default "cron" mechanism in Debian will continue to be, well, cron.
This is defined by the Debian Policy, and hence would need a Policy
change, which almost certainly won't happen fast, and without
discussion.
The switch to systemd timers is just something that I have observed in
practice. Packages shipping both timers and crontabs, with the latter
being no-ops when systemd is detected. I, personally, believe that this
is the right practice.
The switch to cronie as default "cron" is indeed something that I
possibly could have effected alone (as it doesn't require a Policy
change), but recently abandoned.
As you might have seen I have added some suggestions on how people
could help with the migration from cron to cronie on cron's Debian
wiki page [2]. If the plan to migrate to cronie has been abandoned
then such initiatives do not make sense any more...?
I think those suggestions are still spot on, and I believe migrating
from cron to cronie is still the right thing to do.
I'm just the wrong person for driving this :-) In the meantime, I have
become fully occupied with other projects within Debian, and simply
cannot drive this effort, or continue to be a maintainer at all.
However, if anyone else wants to take over the effort, and I can help as
a mentor and/or upload sponsor, feel free to do so. I have filed an RFA
for cronie a while ago (#974038) and have received pings from some
interested parties, but no results yet.
My plans for cronie were probably too big anyway: instead of carrying
over all of our features, perhaps it would be better to stick with
standard "upstream" cronie instead, and to focus on making the switching
process as easy as possible. If anyone wants to try this, feel free to
contact me any time.
Best,
Christian
[1]
https://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs//main/c/cron/cron_3.0pl1-137_changelog
[2] https://wiki.debian.org/cron?action=diff&rev1=9&rev2=10<
