[gentoo-dev] Last rites: www-plugins/gnash

[gentoo-dev] Last rites: www-plugins/gnash

[Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn]

# Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn <chithanh@gentoo.org> (29 Aug 2015)
# Masked for removal in 30 days. Multiple build failures. Upstream inactive.
# (bugs #321017, #581284, #588692, #602786, #649006, #654140)
www-plugins/gnash

Re: [gentoo-dev] Last rites: www-plugins/gnash

[Andrew Savchenko]

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On Wed, 29 Aug 2018 03:20:31 +0200 Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn
wrote:
> # Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn <chithanh@gentoo.org> (29 Aug 2015)
> # Masked for removal in 30 days. Multiple build failures. Upstream inactive.
> # (bugs #321017, #581284, #588692, #602786, #649006, #654140)
> www-plugins/gnash
 
Is there any replacement available? AFAIK no, at least among free
software. And there still many sites which require flash to work.

So maybe mask it, but not remove?

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Last rites: www-plugins/gnash

[Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn]

Andrew Savchenko schrieb:
>> # Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn <chithanh@gentoo.org> (29 Aug 2015)
>> # Masked for removal in 30 days. Multiple build failures. Upstream inactive.
>> # (bugs #321017, #581284, #588692, #602786, #649006, #654140)
>> www-plugins/gnash
>   
> Is there any replacement available? AFAIK no, at least among free
> software. And there still many sites which require flash to work.

The following other free flash implementations exist:

* LightSpark: active development, ASv2 only
* swfdec: development stopped in 2009
* Shumway: abandoned by Mozilla in 2016, very low development activity still 
happens in github[0]

I think your best bet to replace gnash would be Shumway. Though it is not 
possible to use on current Firefox[1].

> So maybe mask it, but not remove?

Current gnash snapshot in the tree can only build against a specific set of 
dependencies, which may disappear any time now (newer versions are stable).

I tried to build upstream git head, but it fails. This was reported a year 
ago, no reaction from upstream:
https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?51484

If it is impossible to build, then I think having it in the tree has no value.


Best regards,
Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn


[0] https://github.com/ExE-Boss/mozilla-shumway
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1443253

Re: [gentoo-dev] Last rites: www-plugins/gnash

[Michał Górny]

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On Wed, 2018-08-29 at 12:01 +0300, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Aug 2018 03:20:31 +0200 Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn
> wrote:
> > # Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn <chithanh@gentoo.org> (29 Aug 2015)
> > # Masked for removal in 30 days. Multiple build failures. Upstream inactive.
> > # (bugs #321017, #581284, #588692, #602786, #649006, #654140)
> > www-plugins/gnash
> 
>  
> Is there any replacement available? AFAIK no, at least among free
> software. And there still many sites which require flash to work.
> 
> So maybe mask it, but not remove?
> 

Maybe it's time you realize that if you want something to stay, then you
need to actually *take it* and *fix it*.  Keeping clearly broken stuff
so that every user could try jumping through a few hoops to build it has
no value.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Last rites: www-plugins/gnash

[Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn]

Michał Górny schrieb:
>> So maybe mask it, but not remove?
>>
> 
> Maybe it's time you realize that if you want something to stay, then you
> need to actually *take it* and *fix it*.  Keeping clearly broken stuff
> so that every user could try jumping through a few hoops to build it has
> no value.

I think it is a valid concern that removal of packages may sometimes be 
overzealous, and to better keep packages in the tree as long as they are 
useful and workarounds exist for build/runtime problems. Just in case of 
gnash there is really no benefit in keeping it.


Best regards,
Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn

Re: [gentoo-dev] Last rites: www-plugins/gnash

[Michał Górny]

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On Thu, 2018-08-30 at 20:36 +0200, Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn wrote:
> Michał Górny schrieb:
> > > So maybe mask it, but not remove?
> > > 
> > 
> > Maybe it's time you realize that if you want something to stay, then you
> > need to actually *take it* and *fix it*.  Keeping clearly broken stuff
> > so that every user could try jumping through a few hoops to build it has
> > no value.
> 
> I think it is a valid concern that removal of packages may sometimes be 
> overzealous, and to better keep packages in the tree as long as they are 
> useful and workarounds exist for build/runtime problems. Just in case of 
> gnash there is really no benefit in keeping it.
> 

It may make sense if there is some developer caring enough to actually
put those workarounds in the ebuild, rather than expecting every single
user trying to build it find them himself (and hope he's got all
of them, and the right set).

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Last rites: www-plugins/gnash

[Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn]

Michał Górny schrieb:
>> I think it is a valid concern that removal of packages may sometimes be
>> overzealous, and to better keep packages in the tree as long as they are
>> useful and workarounds exist for build/runtime problems. Just in case of
>> gnash there is really no benefit in keeping it.
>>
> 
> It may make sense if there is some developer caring enough to actually
> put those workarounds in the ebuild, rather than expecting every single
> user trying to build it find them himself (and hope he's got all
> of them, and the right set).

If you mean, putting these workarounds as elog message, maybe.
But putting them as code is not always possible, as it may require changes in 
other packages or similar.
And sometimes, there were building and working packages masked for removal 
just because they lacked a maintainer.


Best regards,
Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn

[gentoo-dev] Last rites: www-plugins/gnash

[Rémi Cardona]

# Rémi Cardona <remi@gentoo.org> (04 Sep 2009)
# Masked for removal in 60 days, old and unmaintained in Gentoo
# Uses removed VIDEO_CARDS flag (see bug #282981)
www-plugins/gnash

Cheers,

Rémi