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On 2020-06-23 22:50, Andreas K. Hüttel wrote: |
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> Am Dienstag, 23. Juni 2020, 20:48:04 EEST schrieb Patrick Lauer: |
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> |
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>> (And this is why I'm against things like the current py2 purge: There is |
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>> code out there that works, can't be rewritten to py3 in a reasonable |
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>> time*, and hasn't been rewritten in another language yet. There is no |
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> |
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>> tl;dr: I want to be lazy, so stop breaking stuff ;) |
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> |
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> You gotta be kidding me. |
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> |
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> If your employer wants to work on obsolete (yes) stuff, he should task you |
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> with maintaining it. |
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> |
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> In the context of a distribution that does *not* only mean "keep things until |
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> they are so rotten you can't distinguish them from the floor anymore", but it |
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> also means fixing bugs and keeping the dependency tree in a sane state. |
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> |
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> So, in this case I would strongly recommend to the higher-ups of A***** to pay |
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> you (or anyone else) to commit to keeping |
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> * not just what *you* need in Python2 maintained and working, but |
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> * to maintain the whole python-related package tree in a consistent state |
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> then. |
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> Not just complaining that others don't volunteer the work. |
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> |
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> (This argument applies equally to other cases, like S***.) |
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> |
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So, uhm. |
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I'll let you claim it was late and the beer was talking. |
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But that's a totally incoherent hallucination you're projecting on me. |
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The problem with 'obsolete' stuff is that it's often very useful, but no |
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one wants to spend time rewriting it. |
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So for example, codeswarm. The log parser it uses to convert |
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cvs/svn/git... logs into an intermediate representation is most horrible |
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python. I've patched it just enough to satisfy my needs, so I can make |
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nice codeswarm videos, but upstream went dormant around 2012. no chance |
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of having that rewritten into py3. |
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Young startups like Google struggle to find the manpower to migrate, see |
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for example Chromium still requiring python2 because ... err... yes. |
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Most of the stuff from the Apache Foundation is similarly unmaintained, |
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but the useful parts are useful so people will use them. Rewriting lots |
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of enterprisey code is no fun, so it won't happen soon. |
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If I'm not mistaken 'offlineimap' is similarly bitrotting away. |
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At work I have one (1) legacy bit that's used in monitoring that uses |
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python2, and it'll age out at some point and doesn't /need/ rewriting |
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because, well, why rewrite what goes into the trash can. |
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(Meanwhile I don't remember any code changes since perl 5.18 or so, that |
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stuff Just Works, even Go is easy to update with literally 4 lines of |
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code changing from 1.11 to 1.12 - so low-maintenance things exist, they |
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are just old and boring and no one talks about them) |
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Your hallucination that we don't update things is fascinating, but not |
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based on any observations. |
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But there's one difficulty in upgrading: Some migrations are |
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destructively expensive, and can't be automated easily. It took us crazy |
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long to migrate everything to gcc5 because upstream was unwilling to |
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understand dynamic linking. Incidents like that make one more |
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conservative ... and it would be nice if gentoo could be at least |
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neutral and not act as a damage amplifier for such situations. |
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Similarly, EOL'ing python 3.5 in Gentoo ahead of upstream caused a |
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little bit of friction and forced some people to spend time they had |
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budgeted about 2-3 months later roughly now. Which doesn't increase |
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their motivation, but who needs friends when you have a nice up to date |
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Gentoo. |
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Would be nice if we could minimize churn, and have reasonable upgrade |
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paths. Then maybe our users would spend less time on upgrades and more |
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on contributions (or do we want to make things artificially difficult so |
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we can pretend to be elite?) |
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Have fun, |
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|
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Patrick |