On 12 March 2010 14:18, Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury@...> wrote:
> It would appear that the pending (0321) mask of Qt3 will break
> sci-misc/qcad, sci-chemistry/xdrawchem and x11-misc/glunarclock.

The mask has already been in place since March 1st.

> a) Has research been done to determine whether there are replacements for
> these packages and why aren't they suggested in the mask comments?

See the discussion in the relevant bugs and on the forums. For qcad
see bug #284896 and for xdrawchem bug #299588. Glunarclock is
unrelated.

> b) If one is forced to run Qt3 in order to support these older packages, is
> there *good* documentation on how to do this (and why isn't this
> suggested in the mask comments)?

Because package.mask is not the right place for documentation.
It does refer to bug #283429, the tracker bug for the Qt3 mask and
removal. This in turn refers to our announcement [1] which mentions
that Qt3 and packages depending on it will remain available in the
community-maintained kde-sunset overlay.

> So before there is a rush to remove ebuilds it should be asked
> whether it is possible to produce a static build and/or whether there is a
> clear path provided for the retention of "legacy" packages?

There is no rush. We first announced this in July 2009 [2] and then
again in December [1]. We have given every opportunity to find
appropriate upgrade paths. As mentioned, users who for some
reason need or want to keep using legacy packages can use the
kde-sunset overlay.


1: http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev-announce/msg_f295c1c2d9d70238d289de3a7ed5bf5c.xml
2: http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev-announce/msg_d851e05567d538b662f34de8dfdb7316.xml

Cheers,
-- 
Ben de Groot
Gentoo Linux developer (qt, media, lxde, desktop-misc)
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