Code removal - Was Re: Future of the ie(4) driver

[Peter Jeremy]

On 2007-Jul-05 21:56:19 -0500, Mark Linimon <linimon at lonesome.com> wrote:
>> I'm sure even if we push it to a News item and send it out to
>> -announce there'll be someone who said, "Why didn't I get a personally
>> couriered letter to my home, my place of business and my vacation
>> home?"
>
>Although IMHO you are slightly overstating this, I will note that even
>with a well-documented ports deprecation process (ports are tagged for
>~2 months, notification emails are sent to ports@), there will always
>be someone who doesn't get the message.  You cannot optimize for complete
>notification.

Agreed but I think a more "formal" deprecation process would be nice
for the core software.  Possibly a 'deprecated' section in the release
notes (some commercial Unices do this) and maybe a 'deprecated' tag
for the relevant drivers in the hardware notes.  Taking ie(4) as an
example, there's nothing in the man page, the 6.2 release notes or the
6.2 hardware notes to suggest that this device won't be present in
future releases.

>Now I'll put on my bugmeister hat and say that I'd rather see see effort
>devoted to clearing up PRs about hardware that is widespread, rather than
>spending time on obsolete hardware.

I thoroughly agree.  Pity that the very noisy minority who are loudly
complaining that 6.x won't run on their laptops but 4.x runs perfectly
aren't able to assist in moving FreeBSD forwards.

-- 
Peter Jeremy
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