Removed ports - looking from the bench

[Carsten Jensen]

I've seen many requests of late, for ports that are no longer in active
development, abandoned etc
but still working, but they've been removed from ports.

here's an idea, I don't know if this has been discussed before.
It requires work of course. But doesn't require a person to know how to
develop, which is the biggest issue for
people who use ports but don't know how to make a fix to keep it active.

When a port is removed, it'll be compressed and put as a single download
file.
this way the patch information isn't lost and it'll be easier for
someone to build said package.
Of course there'll be complications, this is where a disclaimer comes in
(no support, you are on your own).

As I see it, the work required, after the initial setup, is when a port
is marked for deletion is to
pack it, upload it, and add a comment as last known working (FBSD) version.
It sounds easier than probable will be

The package could then be deleted when it survives 2 major FBSD versions.

I know this will be 2 databases need maintaining, but look at the good
aspects.
* Ports will be cleaned of old/(almost) unused stuff
* People will still have a chance to use an old application

I could be wrong but I don't think that it requires a lot to maintain,
just a few hours a month.

Some major things to discuss about this is:
Hosting: will freebsd.org / mirrors lend space/bandwidth to this ?
Initial setup: package should be download-able using fetch, perhaps a
nice web interface with descriptions of the package.


By definition of package I mean the files in ports excluding the source
code compressed, so you basically could extract said package into ports
and use it as it never was removed.

If there's enough backup for this project, I wouldn't mind taking on the
job, but for it to get most the success
it'll need help from the port committers.


Cheers
Carsten