Google Code as an upstream is gone

[Julian H. Stacey]

David Demelier wrote:
> 2016-09-29 17:36 GMT+02:00 Mathieu Arnold <mat at freebsd.org>:
> > Le 29/09/2016 à 17:03, Christian Weisgerber a écrit :
> >> On 2016-09-14, Mathieu Arnold <mat at FreeBSD.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Google Code has been deprecated[1] since March 2015, and read-only since
> >>> August 2015, giving time to software developers to move their
> >>> development some place else. All the distribution files that still use
> >>> solely googlecode.com as their source have been marked BROKEN today in
> >>> r422140[2], as they are not fetchable.
> >>>
> >>> Most software have moved to some other place (mostly on github), all you
> >>> have to do is figure out where and update your ports accordingly.
> >> Or you can simply replace
> >>
> >> ${PROJECT}.googlecode.com/files/
> >>
> >> with
> >>
> >> https://storage.googleapis.com/google-code-archive-downloads/v2/code.google.com/${PROJECT}/
> >>
> >> which could have trivially been done in bsd.sites.mk.
> >>
> >
> > No you cannot.
> >
> > Before marking all the ports BROKEN, I started by changing the
> > MASTER_SITE_GOOGLE_CODE entry to make things fetchable again. The
> > problem with that approach is that it is just hiding the fact that the
> > software have not been updated for more than a year and will never be
> > again. The goal of marking all those ports broken is that people will go
> > and look for where the software went after google code, so that it gets
> > updated when new releases go out.
> >
> > If the software has not been moved to some other place, (it takes about
> > 30 seconds to click the automatic migration to github thing, and it is
> > usually done within the hour,) since march 2015, it is most likely
> > abandoned and should not be kept in the ports tree.
> >
> 
> As many have pointed out here, abandoned does not mean it's not usable
> anymore. There are dozen of ports or software not maintained anymore
> and still work because they do not require maintenance.
> 
> Marking as broken is a bit hurried IMHO. We should provide a longer
> expiration date by keeping distfiles to our FreeBSD mirrors for a
> while until the upstream moves to somewhere else. Of course, we should
> also bulk mail the maintainer to tell that the port will expire and
> distfiles removed at the time.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> -- 
> Demelier David

BROKEN was useful when introduced, but is too crude, needs improving.
Setting BROKEN= when merely distfile is not at URLs is not true,
it's not broken & will make if distfile is in local distfiles/.

BROKEN is itself part Broken, a liability, as once someone sets it, 
it encourages others to later delete working ports.

BROKEN needs to be improved/ split.
FreeBSD should seek to _automatically_ encourage those who still have a
distfile in local distfiles/ to contribute it back to Internet.

eg create a new assert NO_DISTFILE=true that does something approx like
launch in a subshell code below, called with a - prepended to Makefile line,
so it does not break the make of next port entry from SUBDIR +=

.if !defined(DISTFILES_MISSING_CHECK_ONLY_SILENTLY)
 echo "Distfile[s] lost from Internet, Checking if you have them localy."
.endif
 make fetch	# Not checksum, cos even wrong checksums can sometimes work.
 echo "Distfile[s] lost from Internet, You still have, Please give a copy to:"
 echo "`grep MAINTAINER Makefile` and or ports at freebsd.org"
 make checksum
 echo "Distfile[s] even have right checksums! Definately give us a copy!"
 echo "`pwd` has Distfile[s] lost from Internet, Please give FreeBSD a copy!" \
	| mail `whoami`

Do Not turn whole block of by default as noisey, cos we need it to
run by default, so people with local distfiles see it, & return distfiles

Above is a crude. I could improve & create a patch for bsd.port.mk
but as people may likely suggest improvements + its guarded by 
	FreeBSD_MAINTAINER=     portmgr at FreeBSD.org
better that they do it ?.

Cheers,
Julian
--
Julian Stacey, BSD Linux Unix Sys Eng Consultant Munich
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