maintainer timeout (was: svn commit: r509115 - head/devel/py-googleapis-common-protos)

[Gerald Pfeifer]

On Fri, 16 Aug 2019, Mathieu Arnold wrote:
> Any patch can be applied after a two week timeout, and there is no
> restriction on that patch, it can absolutely include a maintainer
> change.

This may be "legally" true, but I consider it gross and I am not 
convinced the majority of us are supportive.


Unfortunately the finger service is no longer reachable from other
machines, not even the ref* hosts, so you need to log in on freefall,
but

  freefall:~> finger gerald
  :
  Plan:
  I won't be able to work much on FreeBSD during the following period:

    2019-09-01 to 2019-09-28

  If there is anything urgent and important, please go ahead and commit
  the minimal fix to any of my ports (without waiting for maintainer
  timeout).

  In general, if you find any code generation or other issue with GCC
  on FreeBSD, please file it upstream at https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla
  and Cc: me at gerald at pfeifer.com.

strikes me as a much better approach than "I'll be off" mails or
relying on maintainer timeouts.


Now it is not feasible in all cases (think medical issues or
accidents) and I am not proposing to abolish maintainer timeouts,
but something I'd like us to use over other means.  


And, in any case, before invoking maintainer timeout a direct
e-mail would not seem unreasonable.

Gerald