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Re: Is *anyone* using pkgsrc on IRIX?



On 24.04.2020 18:04, J. Lewis Muir wrote:
> On 04/24, Greg Troxel wrote:
>> Kamil Rytarowski <n54%gmx.com@localhost> writes:
>>
>>> I would add a big WARNING in ./bootstrap.sh and force usage of an extra
>>> command option (like --skip-endangered) to pass the build on these
>>> platforms. If nobody will step in 24 months, there is nobody that cares
>>> enough.
>>>
>>> Warning everything except MacOS, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD,
>>> Solaris/Illumos, OpenBSD and DragonflyBSD is reasonable.
>>
>> This seems entirely gratuitous.  People using platforms like this know
>> that they are likely to run into issues, with just about anything.
> 
> Hi, Greg!
> 
> That may be true, but I think you have to also be careful with what you
> present to new users, and existing users of other platforms.  At
> 
>   https://www.pkgsrc.org/
> 
> it says that pkgsrc enables "freely available software to be configured
> and built easily on our 23 supported platforms."  But based on this
> thread, it seems like that is not entirely true.  I'd be fine with
> Kamil's suggestion, but if that's undesirable, then perhaps we should
> consider classifying pkgsrc platforms into tiers like NetBSD does for
> its platforms at
> 
>   https://netbsd.org/ports/
> 
> where it has three tiers:
> 
> * Tier I: Focus - support is part of NetBSD's strategy
> 
> * Tier II: Organic - evolving at its own pace
> 
> * Tier III: Life Support - severely incapacitated or broken
> 
> Doing this for pkgsrc platforms would make it clear where they are and
> not give the false impression that all of them are fully supported.
> 

We received criticism in the past from potential users as we promise
support for many Operating Systems and depend on libarchive in
./bootstrap.sh written in C++. The C++ language is a high entry point
for 23 supported platforms, especially if half of them are long dead...
even if we pass the bootstrap stage on more vivid ones, we end up with
severely broken environment (like stopping on Perl for AIX).

Keeping around support for OSs that cannot bootstrap and have 0 users
does not bring much to pkgsrc.

> Kind regards,
> 
> Lewis
> 


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