Re: [gentoo-dev] package graveyard

[Alex Alexander]

On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 19:45, Thomas Kahle <tomka@g.o> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm forking from a thread on gentoo-project:
>
> On 17:26 Wed 17 Aug 2011, Markos Chandras wrote:
>> Personally, I want to shrink portage. There is no way for 250 listed
>> developers ( I would be glad if 100 of us were really active ) to
>> maintain thousands of ebuilds.
> [...]
>> We need to support only the packages that we can *really* support and
>> lets hope that more people will join in when they see their packages
>> going away.
>
> I like the idea of shrinking portage, but here's a scenario I'd like to
> avoid:
>
> 1) package A is unmainted, but has a sophistacted ebuild that evolved
>  over some time.
>
> 2) A has an open bug that nobody cares to fix, treecleaners come around
> and remove A.
>
> 3) New dev X joines Gentoo and cares for A and startes to rewrite the
> ebuild from scratch.
>
> Is there a way for X to easily query the portage history and dig up the
> ebuild that was there at some point.  She could then use the old ebuild
> for their new version, but without efficient search she would probably
> start from scratch.  Some packages are treecleaned in the state 'working
> but with a single bug (and nobody cares)', it would be good if that
> state is somehow retained after the removal.  Then you can get a fully
> working package while fixing only one bug.
>
> Searching through mailing list archives with automatted removal mails
> would be my hack, what would be yours?
>
> Cheers,
> Thomas

We could try removing all keywords and masking ebuilds that are
abandoned with bugs but upstream is still active, instead of removing
them completely. That way the ebuild will be there when/if someone
else decides to take care of the package and it will even show in
tools like eix.

-- 
Alex Alexander | wired
+ Gentoo Linux Developer
++ www.linuxized.com