Re: long-broken packages (some are removal candidates)

[Aleksej Saushev <asau%inbox.ru@localhost>]

John Marino <netbsd%marino.st@localhost> writes:

> On 4/2/2012 21:06, Aleksej Saushev wrote:
>> It has _everything_ to do with usefulness. If it is useful, it should be
>> either fixed or left alone. It may just work for people who use it.
>>
>> Sometimes it does take years to fix something. Some fixes are way more
>> involved than you think. All you can do with it then is staying aside and
>> watching, if you don't want to participate in heavy lifting or massive
>> code churn. That's why the pragmatic thing is to leave those packages alone,
>> if you personally cannot do anything.
>>
>> One of recent examples is the story of fixing Octave. Your approach
>> would be to kill the package even if it just worked for some people due
>> to some unknown magic. OctaveForge package is another heavy lifting
>> which should be done nevertheless, if you want wider pkgsrc acceptance.
>> Your approach here is to remove it and thus reduce the value of NetBSD as
>> educational platform. I understand that you may care nothing of educational
>> packages, but then you shouldn't cramp others' efforts.
>
>
> So twice now you've indicated pkgsrc acceptance/adoption, so
> it's clearly important to you.  Here's my opinion on the best
> way to gain acceptance and wider adoption: Be high quality.

We are the of the highest quality we can be.

> The following are examples of low quality in my opinion of any
> package system:
> 1) packages that are broken for unreasonably long time

Broken for whom?

We fix them as we get to them, we cannot fix everything at once.
Removing package doesn't fix it.

> 2) packages that are years behind upstream releases

We update them as we get to them, we cannot update everything at once.
Removing package doesn't update it.

> 3) No apparent quality standards for the packaged software (e.g.
> lang/pnet, abandoned five years ago after a single alpha
> release)

I don't know anything about pnet, but five years ago pnet might have
seemed a good idea. If there's no drop-in replacement, it may still be used.
It may still be used even when there's newer version.

Just removing packages doesn't fix the problem.
Removing PostgreSQL 8.2 is plain wrong.

> 4) Use of Kerberos 4, removed by every other package system
> after EOL and MIT (the author) said it was extremely insecure
> (security/kth-krb4, chat/zephyr, chat/tzc)

Do you understand that this is completely different issue?

> 5) packages with distfiles that are unobtainable by new users

Why is that the reason to make life of old users harder?
Perhaps you know how to get Skype running on NetBSD another way?

> Leaving packages broken like a sore thumb works against wider
> adoption, not encourages it.

Removing packages without sound arguments doesn't fix them.

With makefile and patches some willing user can try to fix or update
package himself. Removing package from pkgsrc removes his chances,
creating package from scratch can be much harder.


-- 
HE CE3OH...