What To Do If Your Favorite Package Is Treecleaned You didn't ask for this. All you wanted to do was update your system, and now you're looking at a message stating that your favorite package is masked for removal in 30 days. Just who do those treecleaners think they are! Take a deep breath - here is what you need to do. Get Out of Denial You have a problem. Your favorite package is buggy, and nobody is doing anything to fix it. It might have a dead upstram. Maybe it is holding up some big dependency upgrade. Maybe some would argue that it isn't ready to go yet, but make no mistake, if something doesn't change the day will come when it simply won't work at all. You need to do something if you want to keep using your favorite package. Buy Yourself Time Ok, so the package is masked. First step is to go ahead and and then go grab some coffee. You have 30 days before anything happens, so wait until you're in a good mood to take action. If you need more than 30 days copy it to your and you /might/ be able to buy more time. Get Your Favorite Package Unmasked Ok, you're in a good mood, and you're ready to do something constructive to keep your package around. Here are your options (and you're best off implementing as many of these as you can): 1. The White Knight. Maybe a Gentoo developer will come to your rescue. Maybe you need to post on -dev pointing out that you're a damsel in distress first. If you're nice and make a good case one might show up (damsels generally look pretty and don't engage in flamewars). If there is a reward offered for your rescue you might be even more likely to have one show up. However, if you had to resort to begging, then assume that your White Knight will only buy you more time, so don't stop here. 2. Offer to proxy maintain. A genuine offer to step up and work through fixing the more serious issues is likely to get the package accepted by the team, which will get your package out of the treecleaning process immediately. It might or might not be unmaksed immediately, depending on how bad off it is. This will cost you some time, or maybe some money if you pay somebody else to do it. 3. Revive upstream. Often broken packages are just a symptom of broken upstreams. If all those Gentoo bugs are submitted upstream and aren't getting fixed, then chances are every distro will drop it sooner or later. Get upstream moving again, or fork it, or something. If you don't sooner or later some big dependency upgrade will break your package beyond any hope of patching. 4. Submit patches. This probably won't get your package unmasked on its own, but if you submit patches for the more serious issues it might help to encourage a White Knight to come to your rescue. This is less work than committing to proxy maintaining a package, but it will get you further than just words. 5. Don't start a war over treecleaning policy. If you really want to change how treecleaners work you're likely going to have to step up and do some real work for Gentoo. The policy won't be changed just to save your one package. Read again - you might draw the line in a different place but sooner or later your package will cross that line if you don't do something about it.