removing old linux ports

[Alexander Leidinger]

On Mon, 4 Mar 2013 21:06:58 -0500
Eitan Adler <lists at eitanadler.com> wrote:

> On 4 March 2013 15:42, Alexander Leidinger <Alexander at leidinger.net>
> wrote:
> > It would be nice if the patches results in a nice explanation for
> > the user trying to use some linux stuff on 7.x.
> 
> -1.  7.x is now EoL and we should be removing compatibility cruft as
> soon as the ports tree is tagged.
> Ports in general are no longer guaranteed to function at all on 7.x
> machines.

"no longer guaranteed" is different from "it's known to not work". The
change René presents is of the second form. As such userfriendlyness
mandates that there is a message which tells in clear text that it does
not work instead of letting the user run into a wall without
explanation.

As soon as you remove compatibility shims (but the make syntax is
still compatible), you should make a test at the beginning of
bsd.port.mk which then tells the user that the ports collection doesn't
work on OSVERSION < xxx anymore. Just because we know that 7.x is EoL
doesn't mean that users know about it too, and a clear message is much
more helpful than an obscure error message or a silent failure
(e.g. installing linux ports which are not compatible).

Bye,
Alexander.

-- 
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