Re: [gentoo-dev] [last rites] media-gfx/sodipodi

[Alexander Gretencord]

On Saturday 01 April 2006 22:52, Mark Loeser wrote:
> > Yes, there is. It's slowing down the process, getting into the flow.
> > Waiting 30 days is a lot of time. A regular user does not necessarily
> > follow the dev-gentoo mailing list and it doesn't matter for him, if the
> > package is masked or removed.

First of all I'm not a dev but I do read the dev mailing list exactly because 
I want to know whats going on because changes to the tree normally really hit 
me without warning. The apache config layout change hit me when I needed to 
upgrade and had not the time to mess with configuration issues. Thats because 
I am not the typical gentoo-i-have-to-sync-every-30-seconds user. The last 
time I synced was about 3 weeks ago. On my server its even more than that. I 
generally sync when I need a new version of something because I know of a 
bugfix/feature I need or when I see a GLSA (or Bugtraq posting by some other 
distro/vuln researcher and the gentoo package is already fixed without a GLSA 
being out). That being said, changes in package naming/categorization or 
configuration layout (think apache mess), is by far worse than an old package 
being removed. For a dev 30 days may be a long time indeed.

> Because everyone is sitting in anticipation of the package being
> removed?  Mask the package, and go about your life as if it was gone.
> Then in a month when you remember about it again, remove it.

What does the month give you? Nothing. If someone was trying to update his 
sodipodi manually he would mostly get nothing because upstream was dead. 
Masking helps during that 30 days, after that you don't know whats going on 
either. And considering that upstream is dead for about a year I think most 
people will not try to update that package every 2 days or something like 
that.

> By your logic, we should do away with the entire masking process and
> just remove stuff when we like, and that would just lead to users filing
> lots of bugs asking where their package went.

How about removing the package (its dead anyway) BUT keeping a message for all 
those trying to update. I don't know if that is even possible but it would be 
good to keep that message for more than 30 days.

> Everyone used to wait the month, but lately it seems like no one can
> ignore the package for that long after putting it in p.mask.

I totally agree with you on that. If 30 days are the documented period, then 
devs have to stick to it. If it is too long for them: Change the documented 
time period first! At least that would be professinal.


Alex
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