On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 10:04 PM, Ian Stakenvicius <a...@gentoo.org> wrote: > +1 , the ability to install older versions of software or legacy > software is one of the reasons I switched to Gentoo in the first > place. There is of course a point when these packages can no longer > be maintained, but until that happens there isn't any reason to me > that they should be removed.
Agreed. The question isn't "should they be maintained?" The question is "are they being maintained?" Gentoo is about choice, and there is no such thing as a bad choice if the default is reasonable and somebody cares to provide the choice in the first place. If a package version is being maintained, then keep it. If nobody wants to maintain it, and it doesn't work right, then drop it. That's basically our treecleaning policy already. If you can't think of a reason for having 14 versions of libfoo in the tree, then just be happy that you don't have to look at them. :) I'd actually prefer that maintainers keep more versions around in general. One of my pet-peeves is when stable is a year old, while testing has been bumped every other week in the meantime, but with no version ever sticking around long enough to be stabilized. Granted, I realize that this isn't really the target of this campaign. Rich
