saving a few ports from death

Eitan Adler lists at eitanadler.com
Wed Apr 27 18:16:55 UTC 2011


> What is not broken -- just old, like  databases/db2 or www/apache13*, for
> example -- should be left alone (until it becomes both broken and
> unmaintained). And even then, the removal should not be
> mass-scale/automatic...

This recent sweep was neither mass scale nor automatic.
536/22816 ports is only 3.234% of all the ports. Furthermore bapt@,
myself, and a few other people went through each of the categories
ensuring the projects were actually dead (not necessarily that the
distfile couldn't be found). Then bapt@ marked the ports *deprecated*
which does not mean deleted. It was a warning that people who were
interested should step up and take up the work. If after N amount of
time no one does so they will be individually deleted.

> Maybe, for cleanliness and neatness, we should have a separate directory
> (and category): "obsolete" -- where ports can go to die peacefully. But it
> should not be cvs' "Attic"...

Who will be the ones to deal with that category, ensuring new
infrastructure works, etc? The port maintainer? oh wait!
cvs's Attic can be easily restored if people take up the slack. I see
no reason to change this policy.

-- 
Eitan Adler


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