Alec Warner wrote:
Another class of packages I wish to discuss (not remove quite yet, just
talking ;) ) are older packages with stable markings. By Stable I mean
debian stable, IE we stabled it in 2004 and no one has touched it since.
Do these packages still work with a current system (linux 2.4/2.6,
glibc-2.3/2.4, >=gcc-3.4, etc...
So partially this is a question for gcc porting, how many *known broken*
apps don't get fixed when we upgrade and stable a gcc version.
Depends how much notice we get ahead of time. Things like 'btw we want 4.1
stable for 2006.1' two weeks in advance tend to create more havoc than usual.
Do these stay in the tree, and do they have deps on older versions of gcc
(effectively masking them, since old versions of gcc generally get masked by
profile eventually).
Most major archs have at least some version of 3.3 and 3.4 available in stable.
Sometimes even 2.95, and some lucky winners have 4.1 in ~arch. amd64 has 3.3
masked for some reason i don't understand, and other arches might too. i'm just
going off of what eshowkw tells me.
Unless there's a very good reason, older GCC versions shouldn't be punted
because it's extremely useful to be able to test your code on a variety of
different compilers.
How many apps are just sitting in the tree and no one knows if they
compile at all with a recent system?
Once I'm through with them, hopefully none. ;) I know of a couple packages that
won't compile with GCC 3.3, but for most I have a patch or workaround. libmpeg3
is one, can't remember any others off the top of my head.
I think also that genone's Gentoo-Stats project would be a great
information aggregator as we could identify packages that no one uses
anymore.
+1
Anyway, these were just some thoughts I had about trimming the tree a
bit; feel free to rip em apart as always :0
BTW, I'm interested in joining the Tree Cleaners project once my dev stuff goes
through, if it's cool with you.
--de.
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