Re: RFC: consider dropping www/firefox52 in favor of www/palemoon

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

Martin Husemann <martin%duskware.de@localhost> writes:

> For a long time we have kept the last firefox version buildable w/o Rust
> (FF 52) for the sake of architectures not supported by newer firefox.
>
> However, it is a burden to keep this package buildable and working.
> I think currently it will not work on any big endian platform (which I am
> trying to fix).

There are two parts to this discussion:

  - for any particular person, do they care about firefox52 working for
    themselves, and for others, such that they wish to spend time on it

  - should we rm the package, as causing more trouble in pkgsrc than
    benefit to users

> We have a new alternative: www/palemoon. The browser has superb

> I would therefor suggest that we consider dropping the www/firefox52 package
> sometime in the mid future after proper anouncement. Maybe keep it for two
> or three more Quarterlys?

We don't really have a norm asking for this kind of extended
deprecation.  We don't have a norm that deprecations like this are in
quarterly announcements.  (We do mention EOL for OS versions.)  I don't
think we should start doing this; it's a burden to always do it and it
would create unrealistic expectations.

As a side comment, I have in the past crossed the line where I no longer
care about desktoppy packages on NetBSD N, for various N (generally when
they should have been obsoleted because we should have releases no
longer than 2y apart but haven't).  As an example, I'm now
feeling that way about 9, and for 9 I only care about server-type
things.

So I would say:

  If palemoon works for you personally, just stop working on firefox52.
  If you've been the one keeping it working, so that you expect this to
  lead to it decaying, mention on pkgsrc-users (the proper forum for
  removal requests) that you have stopped working on it, because you
  have switched to palemoon.

  Separately, if you think the benefit to users of having firefox52 in
  pkgsrc is less than the pain it causes (not counting people choosing
  to spend time fixing it - I mean the pain of it being present), then a
  removal proposal seems ok.  I am guessing that if the people that used
  to care switch to palemoon, then in not very long firefox52 won't
  work, and nobody will care if it's removed, which means we'll have
  arrived at time to delete it.

If you instead mean:

  I'd like us to decide to rm it so I can feel good about stopping
  trying to fix it.

then we generally don't work that way.