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>> The ebuild is still available by CVS (or maybe git in future), |
| 2 |
>> but if there were already a lot of gentoo patches, the tarball with |
| 3 |
>> these patches is lost forever. If even upstream is dead, not even |
| 4 |
>> the main tarball will be available anymore. |
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> Oh but it can mostly these archaic packages do not have patchsets. |
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|
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Please, do not put up strawmans. |
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|
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Even if it should happen not often, it it is a serious problem when it |
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happens. I do not remember anymore about the package(s?), but I already |
| 11 |
ran into the situation of long gone patchsets. |
| 12 |
Moreover, a gone tarball is even worse. |
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|
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When I came to Gentoo many years ago, this was a very rare problem, |
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but the removal of packages has tremendously increased, and it is |
| 16 |
not only me who is observing this problem - there were already some |
| 17 |
threads in the forums, and people planning to but not coming back |
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to Gentoo for this reason. |
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|
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> Also there is proposal to create git repository with patches exactly for |
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> this purposes. |
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|
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This might solve the problem of the patches but not of the lost tarballs. |
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|
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It was suggested in this thread to put up some server with the |
| 26 |
tarballs. This might be a solution, but for such "isolated" solutions |
| 27 |
there is always the danger that the same could happen as did once to |
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the Gentoo Wiki: It would be better if the old tarballs are also on |
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the mirrors (at least on some of them); maybe one could make some |
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"optional" directory which not every mirror is supposed to have. |
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|
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> You still can count the packages using huge patchsets using just your |
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> hands. |
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|
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Again, the number is not so important, but "counting by using your hands" |
| 36 |
I did not expect to be meant binary ;) |
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|
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%grep -l "http.*:.*patch.*\..*z.*" /srv/portage/gentoo/*/*/*.ebuild|wc -l |
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421 |
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|
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>> And what if somebody decides to do so in a year? |
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> |
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> If you are person who didn't touch his Gentoo box |
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|
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Again, please, do not put up strawmans. |
| 46 |
|
| 47 |
I mentioned several reasons why somebody might want to do this in a year |
| 48 |
(and actually this already happened to me and probably others; it is |
| 49 |
not so infrequent that people leave gentoo for a long while - there |
| 50 |
are many valid reasons). |
| 51 |
Your argument only shows that there could also exist other (stupid) |
| 52 |
behavior - which is not related at all with my arguments. |
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|
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> so we can say someone get hardware that |
| 55 |
> is at least decade old, honestly just obtain distros build around |
| 56 |
> such HW (like debian stable). |
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|
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Gentoo is about choice. I bet, many Gentoo users have at least some old |
| 59 |
hardware device which they want to use. Maybe occasionally, they also |
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inherit some which they want to use. You really want to scare all |
| 61 |
these users away? |
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|
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>> Or if he was not yet a gentoo user at the time when the package was |
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>> removed (or absent/busy for a long period)? |
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>> |
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> Well he would found out after sync |
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|
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Perhaps there was a misunderstanding: |
| 69 |
How can someone who starts to use Gentoo in a year find out after sync? |
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Or another one know a year in advance that he will have the need for some |
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special software (e.g. to support a device which he inherits in a year)? |
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|
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> Gentoo is not a distro with bigger resources |
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|
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I agree: If none of the developers is interested in a package, |
| 76 |
it is completely fine to declare it as unsupported and to require the |
| 77 |
user to maintain it himself (or hire somebody) if he wants to use it. |
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|
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Masking it is perfectly fine |
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(maybe another idea would be to introduce some new "state" for such |
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unmaintained packages so that they are usually ignored). |
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|
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I just ask that Gentoo should not *hinder* the user in installing/ |
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maintaining a package later by removing the tarballs (and possibly |
| 85 |
patches) which once were available. |
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|
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If these mild (essentially only storage) resources are *really* a severe |
| 88 |
issue for Gentoo (or uninstalled masked packages should cause a |
| 89 |
considerable slowdown for portage's resolver) then Gentoo has a much |
| 90 |
more severe resources problem (or technical problem with portage)... |
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|
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> PS: threading is broken in your mail client. |
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|
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Sorry about that; I am not a regular member of this list and post |
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only about once a year when I really feel that something should be said. |
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|
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In this case, I just wanted to report this problem to where it |
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probably belongs - to the developer's list - instead of complaining only |
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in some forums. |
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|
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Presumably, this will be my last posting for quite a while, |
| 102 |
since I hope that the problem (and suggestions for possible solutions) |
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should have become clear. |
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|
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Regards |
| 106 |
Martin |
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