Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly x11@ project status for May 2018

[Matt Turner]

On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 11:24 PM, Brian Dolbec <dolsen@g.o> wrote:
> On Mon, 7 May 2018 13:38:47 -0700
> Matt Turner <mattst88@g.o> wrote:
>
>>
>> If there's a way to have repoman alert developers to deprecated
>> dependencies in the same way we handle deprecated eclasses, I'd like
>> to know about it.
>>
>>
>
> Currently there is not.
>
> Thinking out loud...  It would mean parsing package.mask to generate
> the list filtering out those with "masked for removal", from other
> general mask reasons,  but even that is not consistent.

Thanks for the reply.

One clarification: the x11-proto/* packages aren't package.masked (for
removal or otherwise) -- just deprecated. They still exist just to
provide a simpler transition to x11-base/xorg-proto. After all reverse
dependencies are updated, they will indeed be tree cleaned.

But yeah. I kind of like your idea. Perhaps some method of marking a
package deprecated would be a good addition to PMS. I can imagine it
being useful in a case like mine, and it would provide a good path
towards tree cleaning. I've always thought it was kind of silly to
start the 30-day removal timer only after the last dependency is gone
from the tree, so maybe a way of marking a package deprecated could
speed that up.

The workflow I envisage would be

(1) Package is marked as deprecated by some method (call it package.deprecated)

repoman would now emit warnings when it finds a dependency on the
deprecated package, informing developers of the necessary changes and
speeding up the transition.

(2) When the transition is complete, the deprecated package could be
masked for removal under some <30 day mask or perhaps removed directly
if it's been deprecated for >=30 days.


I'll figure out the process for suggesting a future EAPI feature... :)