Re: [gentoo-dev] "frozen" overlay Re: Please stop useless removals

[Dennis Lan (dlan)]

HI Michael:
   I can think of it's almost kind of a staging area, some package may be
partial broken(or partial functional),
but still useful for user.
   Generally speaking, It should be a good idea! The end users will benefit
a lot.

   Also if user show his interests, then he can report bug, send patch,
or step in to active maintain the package. Leave a opportunity to him...


Dennis


On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Michael Weber <xmw@g.o> wrote:

> On 02/01/2013 09:21 AM, Alec Warner wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 11:36 PM, Vaeth
> > <vaeth@××××××××××××××××××××××××.de> wrote:
> >>
> >>>>    # Upstream is dead and gone.
> >>>>    # Masked for removal on 20130302
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Erm, so this is the _only_ reason - dead upstream?
> >>
> > If folks do not want to maintain it anymore, then it will be removed.
> > Feel free to contribute to Gentoo and maintain the packages.
>
> Hereby done, becoming a dev is a big step for just one package a user
> would keep.
>
> Ihmo, what you call "upstream dead" is a kind of positive situation.
>
> If the author has no longer time to contribute (we all have a real life)
> then it's ok, no need to wipe his contribution from the face of the world.
>
> If the software is just working as the author intendend, and it has no
> major bugs, then there's no need to do further trivial releases just to
> keep the disto maintainers busy.
>
> If it's broken, uncompatible and nobody steps up, drop it, agreed.
>
>
> >> You are destroying the charme of gentoo by systematically
> >> removing all these little tools and toys.  The availability
> >> of a lot of software was once a strength of gentoo, so removing
> >> these things is really bad, especially if it happens for no
> >> real reason.
>
> We need to maintain a certain quality. Sheer mass does has no charm, if
> nothing works. But I'd rather like to see gentoo as a broad selection of
> tools, that build. maybe some really cool stuff nobody else has.
>
> > Gentoo is not a software archival service.
> >> I was understanding if e.g. someting was removed which needs
> >> the <gtk-2 or <qt-4 framework or something similar and had
> >> a dead upstream. But just needing a small tool like imake (xboing)
> >> or having open feature requestes (epm) or even nothing and
> >> just dead upstream is IMHO really not a reason.
> >>
> >> If something really does not compile anymore and nobody cares,
> >> then remove keywords (or, for god's sake, mask it);
> >> if something might theoretically become a security issue (xpdf)
> >> then it should be masked.
> >>
> >> But please do not throw things out of the tree unless
> >> really necessary:
> >>
> >> It does not hurt anybody to have such package in the tree,
> >> but removing it - especially if upstream is dead - means
> >> that the tarbalös will be removed from the mirrors and thus
> >> nobody is able anymore to install it (even if he would care and
> >> fix some minor issues) unless he had kept a copy on
> >> his local machine (which will mean in the future that he can only
> >> do it if he had used gentoo already many years ago and cared
> >> during the time of the removal).
> >
> > Again I highly recommend archiving the software yourself; but I don't
> > think Gentoo should be doing it.
>
> It costs resources:
>  - distfiles and all their mirrors accumulate
>  - emerge dependency calculation
>
> If it's out-waged by increasing disc capacity and processor power is up
> to discussion.
>
> Last but not least, we have gattered some extra info besides the
> tarballs, our precious ebuild scripts. Which is why I started my
> involvement with Gentoo (maybe somebody should have told me about BSDs
> tree before that).
>
> As Martin said, tarballs get lost. I steal them from debian mirror on a
> regular basis, maybe we should contribute ourselves.
>
> PROPOSAL
>
>   Let's create an overlay "frozen stuff" which contains all the
>   software no longer developed with following features:
>
>     Users showed interest in having them
>
>     Web-presence to be picked up on Google search.
>        (viewvc.cgi show dead is kinda hidden [1])
>
>     Separate distfile mirror
>        no need to stress our mirror peers
>        make it a sepearate repo,
>           feed by upstream and mirror://gentoo
>        I can contribute the space/bandwith.
>
>     Feedback/Bugs/Voting can be handled inside b.g.o
>        no need for extra login,
>        frozen-bugs can be auto-generated,
>        whitelist [frozen]
>        just like the sunrise tracker bugs.
>
> BENEFIT
>
>    User can choose whether or not layman -a frozen.
>
>    Non-trivial ebuilds are preserved.
>
>    Tarballs are preserved.
>
>    Nobody gets hurt.



Comments?
>
>
> [1] http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-x86/
>
> --
> Michael Weber
> Gentoo Developer
> web: https://xmw.de/
> mailto: Michael Weber <xmw@g.o>
>
>