(My last public mail on the topic, I promise). Alexandre Rostovtsev wrote:
If you want an automatic archive for dropped packages, MAKE ONE!
You can study the problem with single-person projects at the example of the (previous) Gentoo Wiki. Without having the files on (at least some) mirrors it makes no sense. (Also, I am already contributing more than I can afford with eix). Alec Warner wrote:
Gentoo has been running for over 10 years without it
This is why nobody yet expected to re-obtain tarballs for packages older than 10 years. Also the desire for still slightly younger tarballs is currently low due to the age of Gentoo. But slowly the situation starts to change, and in a few years, it will look rather differently.
I don't believe for a second that it is the role of Gentoo to have packaged 'any software the user might have ever needed, or will ever need.'
Not packaged, but if it was once packaged, it could still be provided (in an unmaintained form).
It has nothing to do with disk space.
It is. (Only). See below.
Why do you want to put pressure on *me* to maintain software I do not want to maintain?
Not at all. I was never suggesting that anyone should maintain it. I am just suggesting to *not* remove things permanently but just to mark them unmaintained instead (e.g. by a corresponding mask comment).
I think what you have failed to do is find someone in the developer community who is really eager to implement your idea.
There is not much to implement - just to not remove. If you really think that it is a *technical* problem if unmaintained masked abuilds are in the tree (e.g. to shorten the disk space on the user's disk, to shorten eix's output, or just to avoid that portage might get confused some day with ancient EAPI's), one could indeed find a small alternative "implementation": E.g. remove the ebuilds as now (since they are in CVS/git anyway), but to save the tarballs just collect them in some package "app-portage/obsolete" (or other name) which installs nothing but just contains all removed tarballs in its SRC_URI so that they do not vanish from the mirrors. There is really nothing to implement. It is only a question whether it is *wanted*.
Or put pressure on *Gentoo* to mirror someones source code or binaries, for software Gentoo are no longer interested in distributing?
So, essentially, it *is* an issue of disk (mirror) space. Regards Martin
