* Re: [gentoo-dev] Removals reply
[not found] ` <kyvyW-1fg-11@gated-at.bofh.it>
@ 2013-02-02 11:44 99% ` Vaeth
0 siblings, 0 replies; 1+ results
From: Vaeth @ 2013-02-02 11:44 UTC (permalink / raw
To: gentoo-dev
>> The ebuild is still available by CVS (or maybe git in future),
>> but if there were already a lot of gentoo patches, the tarball with
>> these patches is lost forever. If even upstream is dead, not even
>> the main tarball will be available anymore.
> Oh but it can mostly these archaic packages do not have patchsets.
Please, do not put up strawmans.
Even if it should happen not often, it it is a serious problem when it
happens. I do not remember anymore about the package(s?), but I already
ran into the situation of long gone patchsets.
Moreover, a gone tarball is even worse.
When I came to Gentoo many years ago, this was a very rare problem,
but the removal of packages has tremendously increased, and it is
not only me who is observing this problem - there were already some
threads in the forums, and people planning to but not coming back
to Gentoo for this reason.
> Also there is proposal to create git repository with patches exactly for
> this purposes.
This might solve the problem of the patches but not of the lost tarballs.
It was suggested in this thread to put up some server with the
tarballs. This might be a solution, but for such "isolated" solutions
there is always the danger that the same could happen as did once to
the Gentoo Wiki: It would be better if the old tarballs are also on
the mirrors (at least on some of them); maybe one could make some
"optional" directory which not every mirror is supposed to have.
> You still can count the packages using huge patchsets using just your
> hands.
Again, the number is not so important, but "counting by using your hands"
I did not expect to be meant binary ;)
%grep -l "http.*:.*patch.*\..*z.*" /srv/portage/gentoo/*/*/*.ebuild|wc -l
421
>> And what if somebody decides to do so in a year?
>
> If you are person who didn't touch his Gentoo box
Again, please, do not put up strawmans.
I mentioned several reasons why somebody might want to do this in a year
(and actually this already happened to me and probably others; it is
not so infrequent that people leave gentoo for a long while - there
are many valid reasons).
Your argument only shows that there could also exist other (stupid)
behavior - which is not related at all with my arguments.
> so we can say someone get hardware that
> is at least decade old, honestly just obtain distros build around
> such HW (like debian stable).
Gentoo is about choice. I bet, many Gentoo users have at least some old
hardware device which they want to use. Maybe occasionally, they also
inherit some which they want to use. You really want to scare all
these users away?
>> Or if he was not yet a gentoo user at the time when the package was
>> removed (or absent/busy for a long period)?
>>
> Well he would found out after sync
Perhaps there was a misunderstanding:
How can someone who starts to use Gentoo in a year find out after sync?
Or another one know a year in advance that he will have the need for some
special software (e.g. to support a device which he inherits in a year)?
> Gentoo is not a distro with bigger resources
I agree: If none of the developers is interested in a package,
it is completely fine to declare it as unsupported and to require the
user to maintain it himself (or hire somebody) if he wants to use it.
Masking it is perfectly fine
(maybe another idea would be to introduce some new "state" for such
unmaintained packages so that they are usually ignored).
I just ask that Gentoo should not *hinder* the user in installing/
maintaining a package later by removing the tarballs (and possibly
patches) which once were available.
If these mild (essentially only storage) resources are *really* a severe
issue for Gentoo (or uninstalled masked packages should cause a
considerable slowdown for portage's resolver) then Gentoo has a much
more severe resources problem (or technical problem with portage)...
> PS: threading is broken in your mail client.
Sorry about that; I am not a regular member of this list and post
only about once a year when I really feel that something should be said.
In this case, I just wanted to report this problem to where it
probably belongs - to the developer's list - instead of complaining only
in some forums.
Presumably, this will be my last posting for quite a while,
since I hope that the problem (and suggestions for possible solutions)
should have become clear.
Regards
Martin
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2013-02-02 11:44 99% ` [gentoo-dev] Removals reply Vaeth
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