[Mageia-dev] Package removal proposal

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Johnny A. Solbu at 25/08/12 02:42 did gyre and gimble:
> On Saturday 25 August 2012 02:33, Olivier Thauvin wrote:
>> For me obsolete should be reserved for replacements or rename, nothing
>> more.
> 
> I agree on this.

So in two years time, we add a new package with the same filename as one
of these old package, we may get some very strange edge cases on package
upgrades/installer because keeping these old, no longer shipped packages
installed is still "supported" (of course this could happen even if the
old package were obsoleted properly, due to package install order on
upgrades)

What about when there are security issues in the old package? Do we just
drop it and then wash our hands of the whole affair and don't give a
crap when a user's system is completely compromised?

In my opinion we should run a tight ship. If users want to use something
we no longer ship, then they still have several choices:
 1. Don't install task-obsolete and add it to their skip.list.
 2. Do a local compile+install into /usr/local of the software in question
 3. Package it and become a contributor (assuming the reason for
dropping the package was due to a lack of maintainer rather than a
specific desire/reason (i.e. legal))

For all of these options the user is both informed and can make a very
clear, concious choice about how they want to proceed and know the
consequences of doing so.


Obsoletes in packages which genuinely replace the old one seem
reasonable and uncontroversial.

Col

-- 

Colin Guthrie
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http://colin.guthr.ie/

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