package EOL

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le vendredi 28 avril 2006 à 14:04 +0200, Patrice Dumas a écrit :
> > 2. upstream is dead or has decided to switch to another preferred
> > version/something else
> 
> Upstream is dead is not relevant. Some usefull but stable apps have no 
> upstream and that's not an issue. For an example there is asa, a package
> that convert fortran carriage control characters I maintain which has
> no upstream, but don't need one.

So in the Fedora sense you're the upstream. I'm talking of the case
where :
1. there is no upstream
2. the packager can not substitute itself to upstream (to adapt to gcc
changes, vuln alerts, etc)
...


> I personally think that it is acceptable and shouldn't be a reason not 
> to ship those programs

I didn't propose to stop shipping them, but putting them in a separate
Fedora repo to highlight the fact the level of support/testing/fixing
which can be expected is way lower than that of main FE repo itself.

It's way better to have a gray repo rather than putting black sheep in
the main repo just because some packagers find them too convenient to
drop (and are ready to accept the convenience/security compromise a
uninformed user may not find so cool)

> > 4. (for a lib) nothing depends on it in the repo, so there's no one to
> > check it actually works
> 
> But a lib may be usefull in itself!

If the lib is useful then there should be at least one packageable user.
If *no* lib user can be packaged :
1. then it may not be so useful after all
2. or it's only used by unpackageable stuff, in which case I  don't see
why it should be packaged when its users aren't

Also it's going to be loads of fun when users report problems with the
lib and there are no users in the repo to test it against/reproduce the
problem

> > 5. (for a lib) almost nothing depends on it, and the few remaining users
> > are scheduled to switch in the next month
> 
> In that case the maintainer should be smart enough to avoid propagating 
> the lib to devel and to the following fedora version.

If it's that obvious to you I don't see what's wrong in writing it.
Consensus - yep

> > 6. (for an app) depends on a lib/susbsystem which falls under the previous
> > rules
> 
> Agreed, in the sense that apps depends on orphaned libs should be considered
> as also in a kind of orphaned state.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: Ceci est une partie de message num?riquement sign?e
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-extras-list/attachments/20060428/05aafb9c/attachment.sig>