Open namurphy opened 1 week ago
I would propose an additional core project requirement: A succession plan to permit someone else to step in and take over maintenance of project assets (github, readthedocs, pypi, etc), in the event that a "sole proprietor" package maintainer is suddenly unable or unwilling to continue in that role.
A succession plan to permit someone else to step in and take over maintenance of project assets
Thank you for bringing this up! I wonder if we should have a larger discussion about this, and software sustainability more generally, at a PyHC meeting in the future. Along those lines, it seems a good practice for a core project to have a few core maintainers if at all possible.
This reminds me also about successors for GitHub accounts.
The term 'core projects' is not a permanent one. It is about to be replaced by the different levels coming in a PHEP Julie mentioned today in the telecon. I would rather see this discussion happen in that context so that it can have a longer lasting effect. For instance, "What is the process if a package stops meeting the requirements of the package level it currently has?" Other important things that are missing here are:
The term 'core projects' is not a permanent one. It is about to be replaced by the different levels coming in a PHEP Julie mentioned today in the telecon.
That sounds cool! I updated the title to reflect the idea of levels. Thank you for bringing this up!
Back in 2019, the PyHC projects list was modified so that "core projects" were organized separately (https://github.com/heliophysicsPy/heliophysicsPy.github.io/pull/61). Since then we've added a few core PyHC projects, though the process has been somewhat ad hoc. It would be helpful to have a PHEP that addresses the following questions:
pip install core-package
conda install core-package -c conda-forge
If we do have explicit requirements, we should make them relatively timeless so that it's less likely we'll need to submit a replacement PHEP. (For example, we should avoid specifying specific packaging tools, but it's probably safe to mention
pip
and perhaps conda-forge as well.) We'd probably also want a grace period of perhaps six months for current core projects to meet any requirements.All of the above is a brainstorm at this point, and we'd probably want to have a discussion at an upcoming PyHC meeting to dive into this a bit more.