Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Alec Warner <antarus@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-dev] Re: Stable Staleness (mostly toolchain)
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 00:33:33
Message-Id: 44CD1649.8070704@gentoo.org
1 Ryan Hill wrote:
2 > Alec Warner wrote:
3 >
4 >> Another class of packages I wish to discuss (not remove quite yet, just
5 >> talking ;) ) are older packages with stable markings. By Stable I mean
6 >> debian stable, IE we stabled it in 2004 and no one has touched it since.
7 >>
8 >> Do these packages still work with a current system (linux 2.4/2.6,
9 >> glibc-2.3/2.4, >=gcc-3.4, etc...
10 >>
11 >> So partially this is a question for gcc porting, how many *known broken*
12 >> apps don't get fixed when we upgrade and stable a gcc version.
13 >
14 > Depends how much notice we get ahead of time. Things like 'btw we want
15 > 4.1 stable for 2006.1' two weeks in advance tend to create more havoc
16 > than usual.
17 >
18 >> Do these stay in the tree, and do they have deps on older versions of
19 >> gcc (effectively masking them, since old versions of gcc generally get
20 >> masked by
21 >> profile eventually).
22 >
23 > Most major archs have at least some version of 3.3 and 3.4 available in
24 > stable. Sometimes even 2.95, and some lucky winners have 4.1 in ~arch.
25 > amd64 has 3.3 masked for some reason i don't understand, and other
26 > arches might too. i'm just going off of what eshowkw tells me.
27 >
28 > Unless there's a very good reason, older GCC versions shouldn't be
29 > punted because it's extremely useful to be able to test your code on a
30 > variety of different compilers.
31 >
32
33 I'm not sure if I'm misreading here, I'm not advocating we dump older
34 gcc versions. Moreso I'm advocating we dump code that doesn't compile
35 with newer gcc/toolchain versions that no one is willing to fix. We
36 have had devs in the past bring in far too many packages and then just
37 leave, so half of them get picked up by other devs, and the other half
38 sit there and rot. Mostly once again, maintainer-needed packages :0
39
40 >> How many apps are just sitting in the tree and no one knows if they
41 >> compile at all with a recent system?
42 >
43 > Once I'm through with them, hopefully none. ;) I know of a couple
44 > packages that won't compile with GCC 3.3, but for most I have a patch or
45 > workaround. libmpeg3 is one, can't remember any others off the top of
46 > my head.
47 >
48 >> I think also that genone's Gentoo-Stats project would be a great
49 >> information aggregator as we could identify packages that no one uses
50 >> anymore.
51 >
52 > +1
53 >
54 >> Anyway, these were just some thoughts I had about trimming the tree a
55 >> bit; feel free to rip em apart as always :0
56 >
57 > BTW, I'm interested in joining the Tree Cleaners project once my dev
58 > stuff goes through, if it's cool with you.
59 >
60
61 cool
62
63 > --de.
64 >
65
66 --
67 gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
[gentoo-dev] Re: Stable Staleness (mostly toolchain) Ryan Hill <dirtyepic.sk@×××××.com>