Auto-saving distfiles on freebsd

[cpghost]

On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:06:36 +0200
Kris Kennaway <kris at FreeBSD.org> wrote:

> cpghost wrote:
> > On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:51:10 +0200
> > Kris Kennaway <kris at FreeBSD.org> wrote:
> > 
> >> cpghost wrote:
> >>> On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 11:47:04PM -0700, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> >>>> Another problem with ports is that all of them like pulling the
> >>>> original source from the author's site.  I've had a few where the
> >>>> author released the code under GPL then a few years later lost
> >>>> interest, stopped paying whatever ISP he had the main site for
> >>>> the program at, and the porter also lost interest in the project
> >>>> and never bothered obtaining the last available tarfile from
> >>>> the authors site and uploading it to freebsd, then both
> >>>> disappeared. Another one I can recall is the gated code, similar
> >>>> issue.
> >>> Why not add this to pointyhat scripts? Just upload a copy of every
> >>> *new* distfile ever encountered from the author's page to freebsd
> >>> (unless there are legal constraints not to do so, of course)?
> >> We've regularly collected and published port distfiles for at
> >> least a decade (with increasingly higher frequency as disk space
> >> came to permit).  It may come as no surprise that Ted is talking
> >> out of his ass again :)
> >>
> >> Kris
> > 
> > Ah, thanks! Good to know, and it's good news! :)
> > 
> > Will distfiles for ports that are no longer in the tree
> > remain there as well, so that these ports can still be
> > compiled with an older ports tree (yes, I know about the
> > hairy security and dependency issues involved with old
> > unmaintained and even dead ports...)?
> 
> Yes, as I mentioned in another reply it's been years since I have had
> to clean out old distfiles for space reasons, and there's no other
> need to do that so they will remain indefinitely.
> 
> Kris

Great! That's indeed the best solution. ;)

Thanks again,
-cpghost.

-- 
Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/