On 2026-10-26 15:44, Lexi Winter wrote:
Dan Langille wrote in <[email protected]>:
You are short-cutting the process. First, mark the port broken after
one month of it being actually broken. Did you do that? No. A few
months later, mark it deprecated. Did you do that? No. With those
steps taken, the port will be garbage collected by the usual process.
No need for you to delete it like you did.
it's been broken for five months. who cares? if the answer is anything
other than "no one", the person who cares can resurrect the port and
maintain it.
otherwise, nothing is lost by deleting a broken port.
we should not let arbitrary rules stand in the way of improving the
ports tree, especially considering the state of ports.
Is there really an improvement for the ports tree after this removal?
I'm browsing the FreeBSD ports tree for over 20 years (thanks to Dan and
his freshports.org in a user friendly way)
and still only know a fraction of the gems present in there.
From a users point of view, I consider almost any removal as loss, not
as an improvement.
Only by-design-broken and security hazardous applications should be
cleaned that way.
Somebody put significant efforts into providing this port. Hiding from
user visible surface doesn't improve anything imho.
If it's broken, mark it broken and batch building skips - nothing more
to improve at this point.
Further cleanup should require approval by the maintainer imho. If
(former) maintainer doesn't respond within a reasonable timeframe (like
8 weeks maybe) set expiration date (another 4 weeks).
People have another chance to notice about it and maybe adopt it.
This tiny bureaucracy is justified by the resulting transparency in my
opinion. And more important - like thierry@ mentioned - respect for the
users (contribution).
Thanks,
-harry
