Ryan Hill wrote: > 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. >
I'm not sure if I'm misreading here, I'm not advocating we dump older gcc versions. Moreso I'm advocating we dump code that doesn't compile with newer gcc/toolchain versions that no one is willing to fix. We have had devs in the past bring in far too many packages and then just leave, so half of them get picked up by other devs, and the other half sit there and rot. Mostly once again, maintainer-needed packages :0 >> 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. > cool > --de. > -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
