HI Michael: I can think of it's almost kind of a staging area, some package may be partial broken(or partial functional), but still useful for user. Generally speaking, It should be a good idea! The end users will benefit a lot.
Also if user show his interests, then he can report bug, send patch, or step in to active maintain the package. Leave a opportunity to him... Dennis On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Michael Weber <[email protected]> wrote: > On 02/01/2013 09:21 AM, Alec Warner wrote: > > On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 11:36 PM, Vaeth > > <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > >>>> # Upstream is dead and gone. > >>>> # Masked for removal on 20130302 > >>> > >>> > >>> Erm, so this is the _only_ reason - dead upstream? > >> > > If folks do not want to maintain it anymore, then it will be removed. > > Feel free to contribute to Gentoo and maintain the packages. > > Hereby done, becoming a dev is a big step for just one package a user > would keep. > > Ihmo, what you call "upstream dead" is a kind of positive situation. > > If the author has no longer time to contribute (we all have a real life) > then it's ok, no need to wipe his contribution from the face of the world. > > If the software is just working as the author intendend, and it has no > major bugs, then there's no need to do further trivial releases just to > keep the disto maintainers busy. > > If it's broken, uncompatible and nobody steps up, drop it, agreed. > > > >> You are destroying the charme of gentoo by systematically > >> removing all these little tools and toys. The availability > >> of a lot of software was once a strength of gentoo, so removing > >> these things is really bad, especially if it happens for no > >> real reason. > > We need to maintain a certain quality. Sheer mass does has no charm, if > nothing works. But I'd rather like to see gentoo as a broad selection of > tools, that build. maybe some really cool stuff nobody else has. > > > Gentoo is not a software archival service. > >> I was understanding if e.g. someting was removed which needs > >> the <gtk-2 or <qt-4 framework or something similar and had > >> a dead upstream. But just needing a small tool like imake (xboing) > >> or having open feature requestes (epm) or even nothing and > >> just dead upstream is IMHO really not a reason. > >> > >> If something really does not compile anymore and nobody cares, > >> then remove keywords (or, for god's sake, mask it); > >> if something might theoretically become a security issue (xpdf) > >> then it should be masked. > >> > >> But please do not throw things out of the tree unless > >> really necessary: > >> > >> It does not hurt anybody to have such package in the tree, > >> but removing it - especially if upstream is dead - means > >> that the tarbalös will be removed from the mirrors and thus > >> nobody is able anymore to install it (even if he would care and > >> fix some minor issues) unless he had kept a copy on > >> his local machine (which will mean in the future that he can only > >> do it if he had used gentoo already many years ago and cared > >> during the time of the removal). > > > > Again I highly recommend archiving the software yourself; but I don't > > think Gentoo should be doing it. > > It costs resources: > - distfiles and all their mirrors accumulate > - emerge dependency calculation > > If it's out-waged by increasing disc capacity and processor power is up > to discussion. > > Last but not least, we have gattered some extra info besides the > tarballs, our precious ebuild scripts. Which is why I started my > involvement with Gentoo (maybe somebody should have told me about BSDs > tree before that). > > As Martin said, tarballs get lost. I steal them from debian mirror on a > regular basis, maybe we should contribute ourselves. > > PROPOSAL > > Let's create an overlay "frozen stuff" which contains all the > software no longer developed with following features: > > Users showed interest in having them > > Web-presence to be picked up on Google search. > (viewvc.cgi show dead is kinda hidden [1]) > > Separate distfile mirror > no need to stress our mirror peers > make it a sepearate repo, > feed by upstream and mirror://gentoo > I can contribute the space/bandwith. > > Feedback/Bugs/Voting can be handled inside b.g.o > no need for extra login, > frozen-bugs can be auto-generated, > whitelist [frozen] > just like the sunrise tracker bugs. > > BENEFIT > > User can choose whether or not layman -a frozen. > > Non-trivial ebuilds are preserved. > > Tarballs are preserved. > > Nobody gets hurt. Comments? > > > [1] http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-x86/ > > -- > Michael Weber > Gentoo Developer > web: https://xmw.de/ > mailto: Michael Weber <[email protected]> > >
