sysutils/cfs

[perryh at pluto.rain.com]

Doug Barton <dougb at freebsd.org> wrote:
> On 09/05/2011 02:33, Julian H. Stacey wrote:
> >>> It is not responsible to threaten to remove ports without
> >>> warning between releases for non urgent reasons.
>
> We understand that this is your perspective, however the community
> in general has a different idea.

I suppose it may depend on how one defines "the community".

AFAIK there are maybe half a dozen or so developers who have
recently put themselves on record as supporting the current,
agressive deprecation campaign.  The number who have posted in
opposition may well be smaller, so you are probably right if "the
community" is defined as consisting only of those two groups :)

> >>> Better to deprecate such non urgent ports, & wait a while
> >>> after next release is rolled, to give release users a warning
> >>> & some time to volunteer ...
>
> That's an interesting idea, but incredibly unlikely to happen.

It _certainly_ won't happen if those in charge refuse to try it!

> > The Attic is the standard myopic excuse, ignoring not all
> > FreeBSD release users have CVS,
>
> It is available to everyone, and trivial to configure. The fact
> that removed ports still exist in CVS is not a "myopic excuse,"
> it's a fact.

Last I checked (8.1 release) there was no mention of the Attic
in either the Handbook or the Porter's Handbook.  Do I hear
a volunteer to add a section describing the Attic and how to
retrieve things from it?  (I am not qualified to write such a
section -- I'm not that familiar with CVS.)

> We need to make the best decisions we can to provide the best
> support possible for the largest percentage of our users.

But how do we know what "the best support possible" consists of?

I somehow doubt that anyone has polled even a modest percentage of
our users -- to find out what they would consider "the best support
possible" -- since AFAIK we have no way of even _identifying_ more
than a tiny fraction of the user base.

My *guess* is that "the largest percentage of our users" are what
Julian calls "release users" -- those who install a release and
corresponding ports, and don't touch it subsequently until they
become aware of a problem.  They _may_ follow the security branch
for their base release, but that won't make them aware of issues
that have turned up in ports.  Instead, they will be unpleasantly
surprised that a port they use has disappeared sometime after they
installed it and before they have occasion to (attempt an) upgrade.