Re: Fedora 34 Change: Deprecate xemacs, xemacs-packages-base, xemacs-packages-extra, and neXtaw (Self-Contained Change proposal)
On Fri, Jan 01, 2021 at 06:51:15PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote: > Jerry James writes: > > On Thu, Dec 31, 2020 at 5:37 AM Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek > > wrote: > > > > Normally, I'd be in favour of "dragging out" the removal a bit, but > > > in this case I think we don't need to, because of the relatively > > > close replacement and the small number of users. [snip useful technical details] > I would expect that most Emacsen users have moved to > Emacs for that reason. I really wish we had something like popcon. > Jerry James writes: > My reasoning for this change proposal was two-fold. First, it > prevents the scope of the work from creeping while I'm trying to > remove all of the XEmacs-related bits from Fedora. Second, it may > flush out anybody who will say, "You can pry my XEmacs from my cold > dead fingers!" If anybody like that appears, then I get to say, "Well > then, you get to maintain it!" and hand over the packages. :-) Just marking packages as deprecated is unlikely to be noticed by those users, it's mostly visible internally for packagers. I'd say that a clear "XEmacs will be removed" change that will be amplified by linux media is more likely to be noticed. But anyway, I don't think there's much to add here at this point. Let's wait to see if more voices appear after the holiday break is over. Zbyszek ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Re: Fedora 34 Change: Deprecate xemacs, xemacs-packages-base, xemacs-packages-extra, and neXtaw (Self-Contained Change proposal)
Jerry James writes: > On Thu, Dec 31, 2020 at 5:37 AM Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek > wrote: > > Normally, I'd be in favour of "dragging out" the removal a bit, but > > in this case I think we don't need to, because of the relatively > > close replacement and the small number of users. It's not a very close replacement. Mostly in favor of GNU Emacs, which has a large number of features (and regular maintenance) that XEmacs does not. I would expect that most Emacsen users have moved to Emacs for that reason. However, XEmacs has a number of unique features, most important being the ability to load .so libraries in an XEmacs-specific "module" format. Any C-level support for external libraries is likely to require a fair amount of work to port to Emacs, as XEmacs and Emacs internal implementations are fairly divergent. On the other hand, we never distributed any such things (we do distribute a few accelerator modules but as far as I know all of those implement features that GNU Emacs has natively), so most users will be folks who implemented them themselves and have the necessary skills to do ports to Emacs if they're still using them. I don't recall hearing of any that were widely distributed (eg, in a corporate environment). > I honestly have no idea how many users there are. I have gotten bug > reports from time to time over the years, but it is possible that the > number of users has shrunk down to near zero, in which case I might be > worrying for nothing. I don't know either, and apparently we lost the mailing list membership lists when Aidan took them over, so there's no easy way for us to ask. Bugs do occasionally get reported upstream, there are a few folks who did sign up again. But I don't know if any of the known users of XEmacs depend on Fedora. FYI. I'm sad to see XEmacs support removed from various distributions, but the logic is clear. Steve -- Associate Professor Division of Policy and Planning Science http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/ Faculty of Systems and Information Email: turnb...@sk.tsukuba.ac.jp University of Tsukuba Tel: 029-853-5175 Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Re: Fedora 34 Change: Deprecate xemacs, xemacs-packages-base, xemacs-packages-extra, and neXtaw (Self-Contained Change proposal)
On Thu, Dec 31, 2020 at 5:37 AM Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek wrote: > Is it really worth it to go through a separate deprecation step? > xemacs users can switch to emacs after xemacs is removed. I see that > you are concerned about the plugins, but maybe it's just better to > drop xemacs and the plugins in one go. If we notify the plugins' > maintainers now, they'll still have a few months to try to port them > to emacs (if suitable and porting is actually necessary). > Normally, I'd be in favour of "dragging out" the removal a bit, but > in this case I think we don't need to, because of the relatively > close replacement and the small number of users. I honestly have no idea how many users there are. I have gotten bug reports from time to time over the years, but it is possible that the number of users has shrunk down to near zero, in which case I might be worrying for nothing. My reasoning for this change proposal was two-fold. First, it prevents the scope of the work from creeping while I'm trying to remove all of the XEmacs-related bits from Fedora. Second, it may flush out anybody who will say, "You can pry my XEmacs from my cold dead fingers!" If anybody like that appears, then I get to say, "Well then, you get to maintain it!" and hand over the packages. :-) Does anybody else have an opinion on this? If the consensus is that deprecation is unnecessary, then I'll start contacting package maintainers about dropping XEmacs support from their packages. Thanks, -- Jerry James http://www.jamezone.org/ ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Re: Fedora 34 Change: Deprecate xemacs, xemacs-packages-base, xemacs-packages-extra, and neXtaw (Self-Contained Change proposal)
On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 02:53:13PM -0500, Ben Cotton wrote: > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Deprecate_xemacs > > I have been part of XEmacs upstream for over 20 years, and have > maintained the Fedora package for over 11 years. Upstream development Kudos! > == Summary == > Deprecate the xemacs, xemacs-packages-base, xemacs-packages-extra, and > neXtaw packages, all of which have dead upstreams. Is it really worth it to go through a separate deprecation step? xemacs users can switch to emacs after xemacs is removed. I see that you are concerned about the plugins, but maybe it's just better to drop xemacs and the plugins in one go. If we notify the plugins' maintainers now, they'll still have a few months to try to port them to emacs (if suitable and porting is actually necessary). Normally, I'd be in favour of "dragging out" the removal a bit, but in this case I think we don't need to, because of the relatively close replacement and the small number of users. Zbyszek ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Re: Fedora 34 Change: Deprecate xemacs, xemacs-packages-base, xemacs-packages-extra, and neXtaw (Self-Contained Change proposal)
On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 2:46 PM Michel Alexandre Salim wrote: > I see this documented here: > https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/deprecating-packages/#_consequences_of_a_package_being_deprecated > > but not in the packaging guideline: > https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/ > > and IIRC fedora-review does not require this check either. I think it's > probably quite safe to assume the risk of someone creating a new > package that depends on xemacs or neXtaw to be quite low, but should > the main guidelines and fedora-review be updated too? (separately from > this Change, that is). > > I must admit this is the first time I noticed `Provides: deprecated()` Actually, fedora-review does check for deprecated dependencies. See CheckIfDepsDeprecated in /usr/share/fedora-review/plugins/generic.py. -- Jerry James http://www.jamezone.org/ ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Re: Fedora 34 Change: Deprecate xemacs, xemacs-packages-base, xemacs-packages-extra, and neXtaw (Self-Contained Change proposal)
On Wed, 2020-12-30 at 14:53 -0500, Ben Cotton wrote: > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Deprecate_xemacs > > > == Summary == > Deprecate the xemacs, xemacs-packages-base, xemacs-packages-extra, > and > neXtaw packages, all of which have dead upstreams. > > == Owner == > * Name: [[User:jjames|Jerry James]] > * Email: loganje...@gmail.com > > > == Detailed Description == > > I have been part of XEmacs upstream for over 20 years, and have > maintained the Fedora package for over 11 years. Upstream > development > had already slowed significantly when I became Fedora maintainer. > The > last release was over 7 years ago. Since that time, development has > essentially come to a halt. Somebody will push a commit every now > and > then, but significant bugs are not being fixed. I see no future for > the project. We should start moving towards dropping it from the > distribution. The upstream sources have been spread across 3 > packages > in Fedora: xemacs, xemacs-packages-base, and xemacs-packages-extra. > In addition, the xemacs package uses an ancient, unmaintained 3D X > library: neXtaw. It's last release was in 2003. Since xemacs is the > only package in Fedora that uses neXtaw, I propose that it also be > deprecated so we can eventually drop it. > > Deprecation is warranted because there are about a dozen XEmacs add- > on > packages in Fedora. This will prevent us from adding any more as we > work to retire the existing add-ons. > > == Feedback == > > On December 7, 2020, I > [ > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/VDETPULZDBMXBXJKEFZX7DQ5R6W6FBXT/ > communicated my intent to file this Change] on fedora-devel-list. > There has been no community feedback. > > == Benefit to Fedora == > > This Change will open a path for us to eventually remove unmaintained > software from the distribution. > > == Scope == > * Proposal owners: > The only required work is the addition of `Provides: deprecated()` to > the 4 affected packages. > [snip] I see this documented here: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/deprecating-packages/#_consequences_of_a_package_being_deprecated but not in the packaging guideline: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/packaging-guidelines/ and IIRC fedora-review does not require this check either. I think it's probably quite safe to assume the risk of someone creating a new package that depends on xemacs or neXtaw to be quite low, but should the main guidelines and fedora-review be updated too? (separately from this Change, that is). I must admit this is the first time I noticed `Provides: deprecated()` Best regards, -- Michel Alexandre Salim profile: https://keyoxide.org/mic...@michel-slm.name chat via email: https://delta.chat/ GPG key: 5DCE 2E7E 9C3B 1CFF D335 C1D7 8B22 9D2F 7CCC 04F2 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
