[gentoo-dev] Proposal to end-of-life tree-clean old profiles/updates/ files

[Brian Dolbec]

Starting from a question by Markos in #gentoo-portage about whether to
remove entries in profiles/updates for tree-cleaned packages...

I propose that we say, once a year, schedule a tree-cleaning of old
updates files.  These updates files could be added to a tarball made
available for download.  That way if they are needed to update a system
older than what the main tree has been tree-cleaned to. They can then be
manually downloaded, extracted to the normal location and then run the
"fixpackages" command.

The main question here is what is a reasonable length of time to keep
the updates actively in-tree?

 -- From my experience in the forums, I think any updates older than 
    4 years should be subject to tree-cleaning.  

 -- Most old systems that have been updated tend to be less than that,
    probably about 2 years.


This should allow a reasonable amount of time for a user to update an
old system.

Thoughts?

-- 
Brian Dolbec <dolsen@g.o>