Re: Proposed package removals after 2016Q4

[Swift Griggs <swiftgriggs%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Tue, 20 Dec 2016, J. Lewis Muir wrote:
> I'm not a big fan of demoting a package to wip; I think it goes against 
> the spirit of pkgsrc-wip.  Since WIP stands for "work in progress", to 
> me that implies packages in pkgsrc-wip are being worked on toward a 
> state where they can be moved to pkgsrc.

Well, it works (deprecating to pkgsrc-wip) but you make a really good 
point. It's not exactly what WIP was intended for and it's a bit confusing 
(ie.. packages go to WIP to be born AND to die).

> I think demoting a pkgsrc package would be better served in another way 
> such as demoting to another pkgsrc related repo called pkgsrc-attic (or 
> pkgsrc-retired, pkgsrc-legacy, pkgsrc-unsupported, or whatever).

As a pkgsrc user, I think this is a pretty good idea. It gives me a place 
to go look when I suspect something is recently deprecated. It also serves 
as a decent warning to folks so they can either lobby for keeping the 
package or transition to another package before it's fully cut from 
pkgsrc.

This is just an observation, but without a mechanism like that, there will 
always be a lot of fretting & checking every time someone wants to remove 
something. If you have a "staged deprecation" procedure, you can avoid 
accidentally deprecating something that someone really wants & uses 
because it'd still be there and they'd have time to squawk before the next 
quarter or two when it'd get dropped.

-Swift