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* Re: [gentoo-dev] Removals reply
       [not found] <kypjR-1W4-29@gated-at.bofh.it>
@ 2013-02-01 16:52 ` Vaeth
       [not found] ` <kyqfU-34L-13@gated-at.bofh.it>
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Vaeth @ 2013-02-01 16:52 UTC (permalink / raw
  To: gentoo-dev

> If security bugs occur then there's two options -- fix, or remove.

(Or maybe mask with message clearly indicating security issues
or warn about possibly unknown security issues).

I agree. But security bugs are really relevant only for a rather
limited types of packages: Those which are SUID (or have caps) or
automatically called by other programs and reading untrusted data:
Libraries (or used as such like movie players, viewers etc), or
programs tightly coupled to the net (browsers, net games, etc).

So e.g., I completely agree with masking xpdf for security reasons
if nobody wants to care about security issues, although this does
not necessarily mean that it has to be removed from the tree.

However, for all other packages I mentioned,
e.g. simple games (I was not speaking about net games), 
security issues are not security relevant:
It is really the user's fault if he feeds them untrusted data,
and in this case the user's data can be harmed. This he should
know in advance, anyway.

Regards
Martin


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread

* Re: [gentoo-dev] Removals reply
       [not found]   ` <kyshH-5NF-3@gated-at.bofh.it>
@ 2013-02-01 17:40     ` Vaeth
  2013-02-01 20:30       ` Tomáš Chvátal
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 15+ messages in thread
From: Vaeth @ 2013-02-01 17:40 UTC (permalink / raw
  To: gentoo-dev


> [...] and if anyone wants to start where we left he
> can pick out the ebuild from attic and put into his own overlay where
> it might work for him or even put it back to tree fixed.

And this is exactly what *cannot* be done after a while:

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.

> Go for it, i wrote exactly what to do, create vcs/tracker/homepage and 
> it can stay.

And what if somebody decides to do so in a year?
E.g. if somebody gets some hardware in a year and needs support of
a package which was removed?
Or if he was not yet a gentoo user at the time when the package was
removed (or absent/busy for a long period)?

Then he is lost unless a distribution with bigger resources as gentoo
has decided to keep the package. Not really a selling point for gentoo.


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread

* Re: [gentoo-dev] Removals reply
  2013-02-01 17:40     ` Vaeth
@ 2013-02-01 20:30       ` Tomáš Chvátal
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Tomáš Chvátal @ 2013-02-01 20:30 UTC (permalink / raw
  To: gentoo-dev

Dne Pá 1. února 2013 18:40:32, Vaeth napsal(a):
> > [...] and if anyone wants to start where we left he
> > can pick out the ebuild from attic and put into his own overlay where
> > it might work for him or even put it back to tree fixed.
> 
> And this is exactly what *cannot* be done after a while:
> 
> 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. You still 
can count the packages using huge patchsets using just your hands.

Also there is proposal to create git repository with patches exactly for this 
purposes. So bribe infra people with cookies to focus on it and you will get 
your stuff done :-)
> 
> > Go for it, i wrote exactly what to do, create vcs/tracker/homepage and
> > it can stay.
> 
> And what if somebody decides to do so in a year?

If you are person who didn't touch his Gentoo box within a year hire some guy 
to maintain it. Seriously after a year without syncing and checkign the masks 
it is just walking security hole.

> E.g. if somebody gets some hardware in a year and needs support of
> a package which was removed?

Well we never remove stuff right away, so we can say someone get hardware that 
is at least decade old, honestly just obtain distros build around such HW 
(like debian stable).

> 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 that it is removed, but he still can have 
it on his system, not available package does not mean that you have to 
uninstall it from that box.

> Then he is lost unless a distribution with bigger resources as gentoo
> has decided to keep the package. Not really a selling point for gentoo.

Gentoo is not a distro with bigger resources, there is only few developers 
working on everything (yeah we show that 250 devs are still around, but 
question is how much of those are active). If you want real support you can 
always go for paid distros (thats their purpose, to support stuff where OSS is 
out of loop).

PS: threading is broken in your mail client. or I dunno why this reply 
appeared out of thread.


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread

* Re: [gentoo-dev] Removals reply
       [not found]     ` <kyvyW-1fg-11@gated-at.bofh.it>
@ 2013-02-02 11:44       ` Vaeth
  2013-02-02 12:27         ` Rich Freeman
  2013-02-02 13:05         ` Tomáš Chvátal
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 15+ messages in thread
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




^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread

* Re: [gentoo-dev] Removals reply
  2013-02-02 11:44       ` Vaeth
@ 2013-02-02 12:27         ` Rich Freeman
  2013-02-02 13:05         ` Tomáš Chvátal
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Rich Freeman @ 2013-02-02 12:27 UTC (permalink / raw
  To: gentoo-dev

On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 6:44 AM, Vaeth <vaeth@mathematik.uni-wuerzburg.de> wrote:
> 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.

So, I can see the validity of this argument insofar as it applies to
Gentoo-generated tarballs and such, like patchsets.  These tend to be
hosted on dev webpages and such, and as a result they don't get any
kind of version control like files in cvs do.

Code that Gentoo creates should in general be revision-controlled.

Another class of code is distfile tarballs that we create.  Some
packages have these because upstream does not have reliable source
tarball hosting.  Maybe they only host binaries and an scm that does
not generate tarballs on demand.  So, sometimes devs have to create
source tarballs and host them somewhere, and these also do not get
revision-controlled.  I'm a bit torn on these because they are in fact
large files and they're only marginally Gentoo-created, but they
probably could never be recreated with a matching hash.  If for
whatever reason space was no object and we did revision-control these
files we would need a mechanism to obliterate them entirely (or at
least block access) should a licensing issue be discovered.  Patches
are something we could probably claim copyright or fair use over, but
entire source tarballs clearly require a license to redistribute.

I do have to agree with the earlier comment that Gentoo isn't a
software archiving service.  I think we SHOULD archive the stuff we
create - if somebody wants to work on a better way of hosting patches
this is something Gentoo should support (via infra/etc), but of course
somebody has to step up and actually do that work, and it isn't
reasonable to ask treecleaners/QA/etc to leave things with broken
SRC_URIs in the tree until this is done.  Broken SRC_URIs generate
logspam and no doubt headaches in general for those who graciously
maintain our mirrors.

As far as upstream tarballs go - if somebody wants to archive them by
all means do so, and patches for broken SRC_URIs that point to these
patches should be consider welcome provided the package has no other
serious flaws.  However, maintaining an archive of tarballs for
anything we EVER packaged sounds like a lot of work, and not a small
amount of space/bandwidth/etc as well.  Do we archive everything just
in case?  Do we periodically scan stuff in our attic in case a package
we already removed has its sources disappear (and what do we even do
then since we don't mirror removed pacakges)?  Why bother trying to
archive some distfiles if we don't archive all of them?  This just
sounds like a big mess, and not really our core mission.

Rich


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread

* Re: [gentoo-dev] Removals reply
  2013-02-02 11:44       ` Vaeth
  2013-02-02 12:27         ` Rich Freeman
@ 2013-02-02 13:05         ` Tomáš Chvátal
  2013-02-02 18:49           ` William Hubbs
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 15+ messages in thread
From: Tomáš Chvátal @ 2013-02-02 13:05 UTC (permalink / raw
  To: gentoo-dev

Dne So 2. února 2013 12:44:30, Vaeth napsal(a):
> 
> 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.

Awesome so they could've get involved and maintain it themselves if they seen 
it so crushial for their lives.
When looking on Robins automated packages addition/removal tracker it seems 
that the removal trend does not change much, the only thing that changed is 
that now with tinderbox we see way earlier that package is broken to build and 
thus removed rather than being in tree uninstallable. Also on the additions 
side we are quite getting more and more stuff in tree.

> 
> > 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.

As I said in my first mail, distro mirroring system is not to pose for 
upstream. You have to set up some webpage and download on some site. I 
mentioned fedorahosted because that one is managed by rh so it won't diappear, 
but you can put it on github or elsewhere if you feel like it.
> 
> > 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
Yay, now lets see what are biggest consumers on your list:
kernel, coreutils, netbeans, postgres

Sweet this leaves around 200 versioned ebuilds with 2 versions in tree each.
So 100 not critical ebuids of all the in-tree ebuilds use custom patchsets...

I agree that we should track the patches in some git repository so feel free 
to open bugreport for infra team to fire up some structure that everyone will 
be required to use. Also thinking about it we still have this nice policy 
where we should open upstream bugreports and contribute all patches back, so 
they should in theory be always somewhere else too :-)

> 
> > 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?

Yes gentoo is about choice but the choice does not mean to contain everything 
possible in the tree. We keep the tree maintainable and working for everyone, 
it is not just some junkyard of whatever did compile few years back for lucky 
people.
Actually suse/fedora and others remove packages way more than us, they just do 
it with each release so it does not happen here and there but just once every 
6 months (or whatever is their release cycle).

> 
> >> 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)?

So when he starts using Gentoo he can look up if the sw he needs is supported 
and go elsewhere if it is not, or actually contribute and do some stuff about 
it to make it work for himself.
Basically our goal is to create good distribution for us. There is no goal to 
dominate market or something like that. Take a look on ubuntu, tons of people 
are using it but it does not help the development team because not much of 
those contribute back. We rather preffer people that actually can and 
contribute back. When looking on our stats the user counts seem quite same so 
we are not losing any user share lately, but on contributors side seems like 
people are just consuming than contributing back. And contributors are the 
only ones that are important as they help you in our job.

> 
> > 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).

As I said above, cvs tree is not junkyard of something that used to work, so 
keeping stuff around and masked is actually burden for us, where you as user 
interested in the package should care. We have to track bugs and react on 
those even for the masked packages...

> 
> 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.

Managing tarballs is upstreams job, if that dies you can still try to get it 
from rpm/deb packages if such are around. If not then probably nobody ever 
cared that much, so seek alternative tools for your job. We lack the tool for 
the patchsets only and that is for infra to solve. But see above what I wrote 
about the patches, they must be somewhere if maintainer didn't slack and 
adhere to the policy.

> 
> 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)...
> 

No distribution does archive tarballs for upstream that was removed. The 
problem is that it stays around for a bit longer in the release based distros 
as they have some 1-2 year maintenance cycle for which they keep repos around. 
But when this point is hit everything disappears. There is no purpose in 
wasting storage/bandwidth to mirror stuff that is marked obsolete.

Btw did any of you guys look on how much packages were removed just for being 
dead upstream? They usually have to became maintenance nightmare too before 
they are pruned. I myself didn't check that out but I bet it will be not that 
much of the removals.  Most of them just have some running web page and they 
just simply don't build and nobody wanted to fix them.



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread

* Re: [gentoo-dev] Removals reply
  2013-02-02 13:05         ` Tomáš Chvátal
@ 2013-02-02 18:49           ` William Hubbs
  2013-02-02 19:01             ` Rick "Zero_Chaos" Farina
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 15+ messages in thread
From: William Hubbs @ 2013-02-02 18:49 UTC (permalink / raw
  To: gentoo-dev

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1000 bytes --]

On Sat, Feb 02, 2013 at 02:05:50PM +0100, Tomáš Chvátal wrote:
> Dne So 2. února 2013 12:44:30, Vaeth napsal(a):
> > 
> > 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.
> 
> Awesome so they could've get involved and maintain it themselves if they seen 
> it so crushial for their lives.

Agreed. That's why there are last rights announcements with a 30 day
delay before the package is actually removed. That is also why we allow
people to proxy-maintain packages.

In a nutshell, the people complaining about removals should stop
complaining and start volunteering to maintain either the packages, or
set up some place on github or some other service and maintain the
software so we can package it.

William


[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread

* Re: [gentoo-dev] Removals reply
  2013-02-02 18:49           ` William Hubbs
@ 2013-02-02 19:01             ` Rick "Zero_Chaos" Farina
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Rick "Zero_Chaos" Farina @ 2013-02-02 19:01 UTC (permalink / raw
  To: gentoo-dev

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 02/02/2013 01:49 PM, William Hubbs wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 02, 2013 at 02:05:50PM +0100, Tomáš Chvátal wrote:
>> Dne So 2. února 2013 12:44:30, Vaeth napsal(a):
>>>
>>> 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.
>>
>> Awesome so they could've get involved and maintain it themselves if they seen 
>> it so crushial for their lives.
> 
> Agreed. That's why there are last rights announcements with a 30 day
> delay before the package is actually removed. That is also why we allow
> people to proxy-maintain packages.
> 
> In a nutshell, the people complaining about removals should stop
> complaining and start volunteering to maintain either the packages, or
> set up some place on github or some other service and maintain the
> software so we can package it.

This could not possibly be more well said.

- -Zero
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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread

* Re: [gentoo-dev] Removals reply
       [not found]       ` <kyQk1-1q1-5@gated-at.bofh.it>
@ 2013-02-03  5:07         ` Vaeth
  2013-02-03  6:07           ` Alexandre Rostovtsev
                             ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Vaeth @ 2013-02-03  5:07 UTC (permalink / raw
  To: gentoo-dev

Sorry, but I feel that I must explain once more:

>>> 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.
>>
>> Awesome so they could've get involved and maintain it themselves if they seen
>> it so crushial for their lives.
>
> Agreed. That's why there are last rights announcements with a 30 day
> delay before the package is actually removed.

So this 30 day delay will enable these people to get involved,
especially for all the packages which were removed in the last years?
Now it is apparent that an archive for dropped packages (in the
form of keeping masked packages or some other form) is not needed:
I want to join your club with the time machine!

> In a nutshell, the people complaining about removals should stop
> complaining and start volunteering to maintain either the packages

Yep!  That's the right attitude: Give the people 30 days (even those
people who are currently not at Gentoo for whatever reason) to know
years in advance all the software they might ever need and tell them,
if in doubt, just to maintain hundreds of packages!
It is *of course* their fault if they do not!
Later, if they need a package, you can blame them that they have
not voluntereered for all these packages they possibly might have needed,
because years ago they had 30 days time to think about it (even longer
if they took the time and resources to backup on their machines all
tarballs of all packages).

To be serious: If somebody *has* the resources to backup all dropped
tarballs, he should please donate these resources to Gentoo, because
Gentoo nowadays definitely cannot afford to waste a byte.

Or how else can it be explained that this idea of enabling people
to use previous packages if they need to is fought so intensively?

All it costs is some amount of disk/mirror space.
Or is it really that you *want* to blame the user and put
pressure on him to maintain packages?

Strange that as soon as user's resources are required, Gentoo's
attitude was always quite the opposite: E.g. it just *always* installs
bash completion or systemd files (or previously also static libraries,
although I must admit that the situation for the latter was now
improved, fortunately) - the user must care about cleaning
for himself if he does not want to waste resources.

Sure, both is an admissible attitude - only the user is responsible
for everything.

It is just: *I* want to contribute only to a distribution which
also cares somewhat about the users.
Maybe some developers feel the same, but it is of course up to you
to decide this.

Regards
Martin


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread

* Re: [gentoo-dev] Removals reply
  2013-02-03  5:07         ` Vaeth
@ 2013-02-03  6:07           ` Alexandre Rostovtsev
  2013-02-04 11:08             ` Michael Weber
  2013-02-03  7:30           ` Alec Warner
  2013-02-03 13:29           ` Rich Freeman
  2 siblings, 1 reply; 15+ messages in thread
From: Alexandre Rostovtsev @ 2013-02-03  6:07 UTC (permalink / raw
  To: gentoo-dev

On Sun, 2013-02-03 at 06:07 +0100, Vaeth wrote:
> So this 30 day delay will enable these people to get involved,
> especially for all the packages which were removed in the last years?
> Now it is apparent that an archive for dropped packages (in the
> form of keeping masked packages or some other form) is not needed:
> I want to join your club with the time machine!

If you want an automatic archive for dropped packages, MAKE ONE! Get a
domain name, rent a VPS with lots of disc space, subscribe a mail
account to gentoo-dev, write a small script that parses last-rites
announcements and automatically archives the affected ebuilds and their
sources.

You have to realize that there are only three ways to get something done
in the non-commercial open-source space:
1. convince someone else that it's fun;
2. convince someone else that it's important; or
3. do it yourself.

We the Gentoo developers strongly believe that this project is not fun
and not important. So if want dropped packages to be automatically
archived, I suggest that you volunteer for the job of automatically
archiving them.

-Alexandre.




^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread

* Re: [gentoo-dev] Removals reply
  2013-02-03  5:07         ` Vaeth
  2013-02-03  6:07           ` Alexandre Rostovtsev
@ 2013-02-03  7:30           ` Alec Warner
  2013-02-03 13:29           ` Rich Freeman
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Alec Warner @ 2013-02-03  7:30 UTC (permalink / raw
  To: gentoo-dev

On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 9:07 PM, Vaeth <vaeth@mathematik.uni-wuerzburg.de> wrote:
> Sorry, but I feel that I must explain once more:
>
>
>>>> 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.
>>>
>>>
>>> Awesome so they could've get involved and maintain it themselves if they
>>> seen
>>> it so crushial for their lives.
>>
>>
>> Agreed. That's why there are last rights announcements with a 30 day
>> delay before the package is actually removed.
>
>
> So this 30 day delay will enable these people to get involved,
> especially for all the packages which were removed in the last years?
> Now it is apparent that an archive for dropped packages (in the
> form of keeping masked packages or some other form) is not needed:
> I want to join your club with the time machine!

Gentoo has been running for over 10 years without it, so I would argue
it is not *needed*.
Would it be nice? Sure! No one is saying 'hey your idea sucks!' We are
saying 'hey we are not really interested in doing this, but you should
feel free to do it yourself, and we would think it is cool and totally
support you.'

>
>
>> In a nutshell, the people complaining about removals should stop
>> complaining and start volunteering to maintain either the packages
>
>
> Yep!  That's the right attitude: Give the people 30 days (even those
> people who are currently not at Gentoo for whatever reason) to know
> years in advance all the software they might ever need and tell them,
> if in doubt, just to maintain hundreds of packages!

I don't believe for a second that it is the role of Gentoo to have
packaged 'any software the user might have ever needed, or will ever
need.' I'm unsure if this is the point you are making?

> It is *of course* their fault if they do not!
> Later, if they need a package, you can blame them that they have
> not voluntereered for all these packages they possibly might have needed,
> because years ago they had 30 days time to think about it (even longer
> if they took the time and resources to backup on their machines all
> tarballs of all packages).
>
> To be serious: If somebody *has* the resources to backup all dropped
> tarballs, he should please donate these resources to Gentoo, because
> Gentoo nowadays definitely cannot afford to waste a byte.

It has nothing to do with disk space. The tree has software packages
in it. I would argue that *most* of the software:

1) Has someone in Gentoo to maintain it.
2) Has a herd in Gentoo to maintain it.
3) Has a proxy-maintainer outside of Gentoo and a dev willing to
commit on behalf of that person to maintain it.

A minority of the software available is un-maintained. When I started
the treecleaner project, I wanted all the software in the tree to have
a maintainer; packages that had no maintainer would be removed. This
was basically voted down by the Gentoo Community. Instead we adopted a
less aggressive policy:

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/qa/treecleaners/policy.xml

Treecleaners also quasi-manage maintainer-needed packages.
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/qa/treecleaners/maintainer-needed.xml

Note that there are currently 734 packages 'assigned' to maintainer needed.

When I created the treecleaners project I really tried to make the
policies very straightforward so that when maskings occurred that
users would not be confused as to why the package was being removed,
and I also tried to make it clear how a user or developer could 'save'
a package.

>
> Or how else can it be explained that this idea of enabling people
> to use previous packages if they need to is fought so intensively?

Again I don't think anyone dismisses the idea. The problem is
implementing it is perhaps not as trivial as you think. If I pick on
the git migration as an example; we have essentially been 'trying to
migrate to git' for like 2 years. That is going very slowly, even
though everyone is basically on board with the idea.

This is not a small agile project. Very often you need folks in the
community willing to drive things to completion. mgorny's work on
python-r1.eclass and his multilib stuff is one recent example.

I think what you have failed to do is find someone in the developer
community who is really eager to implement your idea.

>
> All it costs is some amount of disk/mirror space.
> Or is it really that you *want* to blame the user and put
> pressure on him to maintain packages?

Why do you want to put pressure on *me* to maintain software I do not
want to maintain? Or put pressure on *Gentoo* to mirror someones
source code or binaries, for software Gentoo are no longer interested
in distributing?

>
> Strange that as soon as user's resources are required, Gentoo's
> attitude was always quite the opposite: E.g. it just *always* installs
> bash completion or systemd files (or previously also static libraries,
> although I must admit that the situation for the latter was now
> improved, fortunately) - the user must care about cleaning
> for himself if he does not want to waste resources.
>
> Sure, both is an admissible attitude - only the user is responsible
> for everything.
>
> It is just: *I* want to contribute only to a distribution which
> also cares somewhat about the users.
> Maybe some developers feel the same, but it is of course up to you
> to decide this.
>
> Regards
> Martin
>


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread

* Re: [gentoo-dev] Removals reply
       [not found]           ` <kz2lb-7Z1-1@gated-at.bofh.it>
@ 2013-02-03 13:18             ` Vaeth
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Vaeth @ 2013-02-03 13:18 UTC (permalink / raw
  To: gentoo-dev

(My last public mail on the topic, I promise).

Alexandre Rostovtsev wrote:
> If you want an automatic archive for dropped packages, MAKE ONE!

You can study the problem with single-person projects at the example
of the (previous) Gentoo Wiki.
Without having the files on (at least some) mirrors it makes no sense.

(Also, I am already contributing more than I can afford with eix).

Alec Warner wrote:
> Gentoo has been running for over 10 years without it

This is why nobody yet expected to re-obtain tarballs for
packages older than 10 years. Also the desire for still slightly
younger tarballs is currently low due to the age of Gentoo.

But slowly the situation starts to change, and in a few years,
it will look rather differently.

> I don't believe for a second that it is the role of Gentoo to have
> packaged 'any software the user might have ever needed, or will ever
> need.'

Not packaged, but if it was once packaged, it could still be provided
(in an unmaintained form).

> It has nothing to do with disk space.

It is. (Only). See below.

> Why do you want to put pressure on *me* to maintain software I do not
> want to maintain?

Not at all.  I was never suggesting that anyone should maintain it.
I am just suggesting to *not* remove things permanently but just to
mark them unmaintained instead (e.g. by a corresponding mask comment).

> I think what you have failed to do is find someone in the developer
> community who is really eager to implement your idea.

There is not much to implement - just to not remove.

If you really think that it is a *technical* problem if unmaintained
masked abuilds are in the tree (e.g. to shorten the disk space on
the user's disk, to shorten eix's output, or just to avoid that
portage might get confused some day with ancient EAPI's),
one could indeed find a small alternative "implementation":

E.g. remove the ebuilds as now (since they are in CVS/git anyway),
but to save the tarballs just collect them in some package
"app-portage/obsolete" (or other name) which installs nothing
but just contains all removed tarballs in its SRC_URI so that
they do not vanish from the mirrors.

There is really nothing to implement. It is only a question
whether it is *wanted*.

> Or put pressure on *Gentoo* to mirror someones
> source code or binaries, for software Gentoo are no longer interested
> in distributing?

So, essentially, it *is* an issue of disk (mirror) space.

Regards
Martin


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread

* Re: [gentoo-dev] Removals reply
  2013-02-03  5:07         ` Vaeth
  2013-02-03  6:07           ` Alexandre Rostovtsev
  2013-02-03  7:30           ` Alec Warner
@ 2013-02-03 13:29           ` Rich Freeman
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Rich Freeman @ 2013-02-03 13:29 UTC (permalink / raw
  To: gentoo-dev

On Sun, Feb 3, 2013 at 12:07 AM, Vaeth
<vaeth@mathematik.uni-wuerzburg.de> wrote:
> Yep!  That's the right attitude: Give the people 30 days (even those
> people who are currently not at Gentoo for whatever reason) to know
> years in advance all the software they might ever need and tell them,
> if in doubt, just to maintain hundreds of packages!
> It is *of course* their fault if they do not!
> Later, if they need a package, you can blame them that they have
> not voluntereered for all these packages they possibly might have needed,
> because years ago they had 30 days time to think about it (even longer
> if they took the time and resources to backup on their machines all
> tarballs of all packages).

If the package gets masked and you want to keep it around, just fetch
the tarball (which should still be on the mirrors) and copy the ebuild
to your own overlay.

For you personally, there is no longer a crisis.  Now, if you want the
rest of the world to benefit from your work you can publish that
overlay and stick the distfile somewhere public.

You're welcome to get somebody to help you proxy-maintain the package
in the tree as well.  If the only thing wrong with the package is the
missing SRC_URI you shouldn't have too much trouble finding somebody
willing to do the commit.

Creating a long-term repository for upstream tarballs even after we
drop the package is not a trivial job.  There would be considerable
space requirements, and there are legal issues as well (since they
aren't maintained nobody is looking for license issues/etc).  There
are many packages in the tree with RESTRICT=mirror and those we can't
do anything for in any case.

Sure, the road to becoming a dev is a long one, but NOBODY needs
PERMISSION to contribute to Gentoo.  Anybody can submit patches, and
anybody can run their own overlay.  In most distros this is a much
more common practice.  Go look up your favorite piece of software and
you'll probably find their instructions for installing it on Gentoo
start out by adding another repository to your configuration - they
couldn't even get Ubuntu to carry their package despite having done
all the work for them.

With services like github and such it really doesn't take that much
work to set up your own overlay.  If you do that you can package
whatever you want and nobody will tell you that you're in violation of
any rules.  Gentoo really is an empowering distro.

However, manpower is tight at Gentoo, and we're all volunteers.  You
can't just yell at devs and tell them to do more work.  It won't get
you very far.

Rich


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread

* Re: [gentoo-dev] Removals reply
  2013-02-03  6:07           ` Alexandre Rostovtsev
@ 2013-02-04 11:08             ` Michael Weber
  2013-02-04 15:45               ` Gilles Dartiguelongue
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 15+ messages in thread
From: Michael Weber @ 2013-02-04 11:08 UTC (permalink / raw
  To: gentoo-dev

On 02/03/2013 07:07 AM, Alexandre Rostovtsev wrote:
> We the Gentoo developers strongly believe that this project is not fun
> and not important. 
veto. a) there is no "we", b) there are conrary posts on this list.


-- 
Michael Weber
Gentoo Developer
web: https://xmw.de/
mailto: Michael Weber <xmw@gentoo.org>


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread

* Re: [gentoo-dev] Removals reply
  2013-02-04 11:08             ` Michael Weber
@ 2013-02-04 15:45               ` Gilles Dartiguelongue
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Gilles Dartiguelongue @ 2013-02-04 15:45 UTC (permalink / raw
  To: gentoo-dev

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 775 bytes --]

Le lundi 04 février 2013 à 12:08 +0100, Michael Weber a écrit :
> On 02/03/2013 07:07 AM, Alexandre Rostovtsev wrote:
> > We the Gentoo developers strongly believe that this project is not fun
> > and not important. 
> veto. a) there is no "we", b) there are conrary posts on this list.

that doesn't mean this is the majority either. In any case, if anyone
feels strongly about this, it should probably be discussed on -project
and/or brought up to the council. I have absolutely no interest in
having Gentoo be some kind of archive distro and will not read any
further mail in this thread since it has looped a few times already on
the same arguments.

Thanks for reading this "captain obvious" mail.

-- 
Gilles Dartiguelongue <eva@gentoo.org>
Gentoo

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2013-02-04 15:45 UTC | newest]

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2013-02-03 13:18             ` [gentoo-dev] Removals reply Vaeth
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2013-02-03  5:07         ` Vaeth
2013-02-03  6:07           ` Alexandre Rostovtsev
2013-02-04 11:08             ` Michael Weber
2013-02-04 15:45               ` Gilles Dartiguelongue
2013-02-03  7:30           ` Alec Warner
2013-02-03 13:29           ` Rich Freeman
     [not found] <kys82-5oT-5@gated-at.bofh.it>
     [not found] ` <kysUq-6og-21@gated-at.bofh.it>
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     [not found]     ` <kyvyW-1fg-11@gated-at.bofh.it>
2013-02-02 11:44       ` Vaeth
2013-02-02 12:27         ` Rich Freeman
2013-02-02 13:05         ` Tomáš Chvátal
2013-02-02 18:49           ` William Hubbs
2013-02-02 19:01             ` Rick "Zero_Chaos" Farina
     [not found] <kypjR-1W4-29@gated-at.bofh.it>
2013-02-01 16:52 ` Vaeth
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     [not found]   ` <kyshH-5NF-3@gated-at.bofh.it>
2013-02-01 17:40     ` Vaeth
2013-02-01 20:30       ` Tomáš Chvátal

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