If there's a github link in the package url, it could check the last update to the default branch. If it's more than 6 months ago, an email to the maintainer of "is this package maintained?" can be sent. If there's no reply in 3 months, the package is marked as unmaintained. If the email is ever responded to or a new version is uploaded, the package can be un-marked.
  - Clark
On Sunday, May 5, 2013, Lyndon Maydwell wrote:
I've got it!

The answer was staring us in the face all along... We can just introduce backwards-compatibility breaking changes into GHC-head and see if the project fails to compile for x-time! That way we're SURE it's unmaintained.

I'll stop sending emails now.


On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 10:44 AM, Clark Gaebel <cgaebel@uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
If there's a github link in the package url, it could check the last update to the default branch. If it's more than 6 months ago, an email to the maintainer of "is this package maintained?" can be sent. If there's no reply in 3 months, the package is marked as unmaintained. If the email is ever responded to or a new version is uploaded, the package can be un-marked.

  - Clark


On Sunday, May 5, 2013, Lyndon Maydwell wrote:
But what if the package is already perfect?

Jokes aside, I think that activity alone wouldn't be a good indicator.


On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Conrad Parker <conrad@metadecks.org> wrote:
On 6 May 2013 09:42, Felipe Almeida Lessa <felipe.lessa@gmail.com> wrote:
> Just checking the repo wouldn't work.  It may still have some activity
> but not be maintained and vice-versa.

ok, how about this: if the maintainer feels that their repo and
maintenance activities are non-injective they can additionally provide
an http-accessible URL for the maintenance activity. Hackage can then
do an HTTP HEAD request on that URL and use the Last-Modified response
header as an indication of the last time of maintenance activity. I'm
being a bit tongue-in-cheek, but actually this would allow you to
point hackage to a blog as evidence of maintenance activity.

I like the idea of just pinging the code repo.

Conrad.

> On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 2:19 PM, Doug Burke <dburke.gw@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On May 5, 2013 7:25 AM, "Petr Pudlák" <petr.mvd@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> on another thread there was a suggestion which perhaps went unnoticed by
>>> most:
>>>
>>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>>> From: Niklas Hambüchen <mail@nh2.me>
>>>> Date: 2013/5/4
>>>> ...
>>>> I would even be happy with newhackage sending every package maintainer a
>>>> quarterly question "Would you still call your project X 'maintained'?"
>>>> for each package they maintain; Hackage could really give us better
>>>> indications concerning this.
>>>
>>>
>>> This sounds to me like a very good idea. It could be as simple as "If you
>>> consider yourself to be the maintainer of package X please just hit reply
>>> and send." If Hackage doesn't get an answer, it'd just would display some
>>> red text like "This package seems to be unmaintained since D.M.Y."
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> Petr
>>>
>>
>> For those packages that give a repository, a query could be done
>> automatically to see when it was last updated. It's not the same thing as
>> 'being maintained', but is less annoying for those people with many packages
>> on hackage.
>>
>> Doug
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
>
> --
> Felipe.
>
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