Why delete KDE3 ports?

[Adam Vande More]

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 8:07 AM, Mikhail T. <mi+thun at aldan.algebra.com>wrote:

> Worse, KDE4 is not only much heavier (which could've been acceptable).


This is simply not true, or at least easily remediable.  A few clicks leads
to nice UI experience with roughly the same amount of overheard as the 3.x
series.  There are a number of quasi-legit investigations into the matter.
 Regardless of those methodologies, at the end of the day KDE4 requires
only slightly more memory than 3 if at all.


> It is also not compatible -- people like myself, who customized their
> desktops with additional menus, who created knotes, etc. will have to redo
> all of their settings. KDE4, as built, is not even going to look under the
> ~/.kde. Though it can be compiled to consider the old directory, the
> format/syntax for many of the config-files has changed -- and there is no
> "upgrade path".


I don't use knotes, but have you tried the solution here?
http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=84823


> This can all be handled, but meanwhile, until there ARE actual problems,
> leave the ports alone, please.


"Actual problems" have already been cited for it.  Fighting change can
often lead much more wasted effort than simply adjusting to modern
offerings.  It's easy enough to pull the port out of archive for the small
amount of users who will insist on using a deprecated DE with known
security issues.  I don't think it reflects well on the project to continue
to offer this as an option, and IMO at the very least needs to come with a
blinking red light disclaimer if the port continues to exist.

Jakub Lach:
> In spite of not having 'proper' maintainer both kdelibs3/ and kdebas3/ saw
substantial interest in form of patches

Not recently, unless you mean bulk patches for patches to options
framework, clang, or some other general change such as
http://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports?view=revision&revision=297915


-- 
Adam Vande More