Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: glibc versions prior to 2.19-r1

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 10:52 AM, Anthony G. Basile <blueness@g.o> wrote:
> On 12/22/14 10:39, Rich Freeman wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 10:04 AM, William Hubbs <williamh@g.o>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 03:18:01PM +0100, Matthias Maier wrote:
>>>>
>>>> IMHO, maintaining a sensible set of old glibc versions of the last 5
>>>> years makes sense, and we should try to support it:
>>>
>>> We have a general policy in the distro that says we only have to worry
>>> about one year. Besides that, linux-2.6.32, which is the oldest kernel
>>> glibc-2.20 will support was released in 2009, so I think it is
>>> reasonable to drop the old glibc versions.
>>>
>> I think a general policy like this makes sense.  Nothing prevents a
>> maintainer from keeping around stuff longer, but that should be up to
>> them (and issues in old versions shouldn't be the responsibility of
>> others to clean up if they are blockers - just move forward and let
>> things break after a warning or treeclean if the problem is really
>> serious).
>
>
> Please let's not "tidy up" gentoo.  That "old" stuff is useful even if its
> not useful to those who don't see a use for it.  Let the maintainers decide
> if they want to put effort into keeping it around.
>

Wasn't that what I just said?  Maintainers decide what they want to
put effort into maintaining.  The only bit I added beyond what you
said is that if they DON'T maintain the old versions others don't have
to do it for them.  (ie, bugs against them don't count as blockers
towards other changes in the tree)  Treecleaning is only appropriate
if things are horribly broken, which is the usual policy.

--
Rich