Part of what we aim to do at rOpenSci is nurture a community of package maintainers who help each other. In addition to support during package maintenance, we also want to support maintainers who wish to move on. Situations can change, and there may come a time when a maintainer is looking to pass maintenance on to another. If a maintainer finds themself in this situation and would like to transfer maintainership, we help by advertising, and also help the new maintainer(s) with advice, generally à la “look around to see if anything needs fixing, then do routine maintenance”. But what is routine maintenance? This post is an attempt to define what package maintenance entails, with a few tips.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://ropensci.org/blog/2023/02/07/what-does-it-mean-to-maintain-a-package/