added a section on how to deal with unreachable (maybe-MIA) maintainers

git-svn-id: svn://anonscm.debian.org/ddp/manuals/trunk/developers-reference@1418 313b444b-1b9f-4f58-a734-7bb04f332e8d

diff --git a/developers-reference.sgml b/developers-reference.sgml
index 8ff600ef5c98ea6f78e519dcd78c03b1e2c83771..fe45226f0dde9ca27d07cea1e4bdd1e3cf0fea4a 100644 (file)
--- a/developers-reference.sgml
+++ b/developers-reference.sgml
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@
   <!-- common, language independant entities -->
   <!entity % commondata  SYSTEM "common.ent" > %commondata;
   <!-- CVS revision of this document -->
-  <!entity cvs-rev "$Revision: 1.72 $">
+  <!entity cvs-rev "$Revision: 1.73 $">
 
   <!-- if you are translating this document, please notate the RCS
        revision of the developers reference here -->
@@ -368,6 +368,22 @@ id="orphaning">). Alternatively, you may ask the help of other people
 in order to catch up the backlog of bugs that you have (you can ask
 for help on &email-debian-qa; or &email-debian-devel;).
 
+    <sect id="mia-qa">Dealing with unreachable maintainers
+      <p>
+If you notice that a package is lacking maintenance, you should
+make sure the maintainer is active and will continue to work on
+their packages. Try contacting them yourself.
+      <p>
+If you do not get a reply after a few weeks you should collect all 
+useful information about this maintainer. Start by logging in to 
+the <url id="http://db.debian.org" name="Debian Developer's Database">
+and doing a full search to check whether the maintainer is on vacation
+and when they were last seen. Collect any important package names
+they maintain and any Release Critical bugs filled against them.
+      <p>
+Send all this information to &email-debian-qa, in order to let the 
+QA people do whatever is needed.
+
       <sect>Retiring Gracefully
        <p>
 If you choose to leave the Debian project, you should make sure you do