Re: [gentoo-dev] Qt3 mask breaks significant science packages
> "BdG" == Ben de Groot writes: BdG> On 14 March 2010 06:09, James Cloos wrote: >>> "BdG" == Ben de Groot writes: >> BdG> Abandoned packages do not belong in the portage tree. >> >> Nonsense. That attitude only servers to harm the user base. BdG> You're wrong. It serves to protect our users from potentially BdG> broken and vulnerable packages. Any user who needs *that* much hand-holding will use a binary dist, not a source dist. BdG> It ascertains a Quality Assurance level that we and our users can BdG> be comfortable with. No, it does not. The user base for a build-locally-from-source dist wants wider access, not just a few packages. >> Leaving them in does not. BdG> It does, as it opens the users up to unknown security BdG> vulnerabilities and increasing brokenness as bugs are BdG> not addressed. Removing the ebuilds does not help that even one bit. IF they do not use those programs, they are not harmed even if there is some (real) vulnerability -- and don't forget that most of the vulnerability claims are for things which will never happen in practice. (Which is not to suggest that upstreams shouldn't code defensively, just that not every warning is critical enough to loose sleep over.) BdG> If Gentoo would stop caring about QA, then we'd be wasting BdG> our time working on making this a better distro. Removing ebuilds is not in itself QA. It does not in itself improve quality. There has to be a real reason to remove. Removing a leaf package which has been replaced by its upstream, whether by a simple rename or by a complete re-implementation or anywhere inbetween, is a good call. Removing a widely-used, well-designed and well-managed library and everything which depends on it, just because upstream has stopped dealing with bug reports against that version, is not. The likelyhood that any significant issues remain in qt3 is small. The relevant apps work, have been working and will continue to work. I will not begrudge the kde team for wanting to support only kde4. Dropping kde3 in favour of kde4 is just an upgrade. But dropping qt3 even though packages exist which depend on it and have not been ported to qt4 (and it *is* a /port/, *not* an /upgrade/) is simply the wrong thing to do. It is also OK to mask -- but not necessarily remove -- a package with a truly exploitable bug; moreso if the package is itself security-related. That means real exploits in the wild, real attempts to do harm. The so-called qa team has been acting too robotically. It needs to show more common sense and better judgement. Worry about the real problems, not the trivial. Work to fix packages, not to murder them. -JimC -- James Cloos OpenPGP: 1024D/ED7DAEA6
Re: [gentoo-dev] Qt3 mask breaks significant science packages
On 14 March 2010 06:09, James Cloos wrote: >> "BdG" == Ben de Groot writes: > > BdG> Abandoned packages do not belong in the portage tree. > > Nonsense. That attitude only servers to harm the user base. You're wrong. It serves to protect our users from potentially broken and vulnerable packages. It ascertains a Quality Assurance level that we and our users can be comfortable with. > Leaving them in does not. It does, as it opens the users up to unknown security vulnerabilities and increasing brokenness as bugs are not addressed. If Gentoo would stop caring about QA, then we'd be wasting our time working on making this a better distro. Cheers, -- Ben de Groot Gentoo Linux developer (qt, media, lxde, desktop-misc) __
Re: [gentoo-dev] Qt3 mask breaks significant science packages
On Sunday 14 of March 2010 06:09:44 James Cloos wrote: > > "BdG" == Ben de Groot writes: > BdG> Abandoned packages do not belong in the portage tree. > > Nonsense. That attitude only servers to harm the user base. > > Leaving them in does not. But leaving them broken and unmaintained in main repository harms Gentoo quality and image. "User base" is welcome to step up and help with maintenance and that's what guys in kde-sunsite overlay actually do. So... patches welcome! Thanks! -- regards MM
Re: [gentoo-dev] Qt3 mask breaks significant science packages
> "BdG" == Ben de Groot writes: BdG> Abandoned packages do not belong in the portage tree. Nonsense. That attitude only servers to harm the user base. Leaving them in does not. -JimC -- James Cloos OpenPGP: 1024D/ED7DAEA6
Re: [gentoo-dev] Qt3 mask breaks significant science packages
On Friday 12 March 2010 15:18:21 Robert Bradbury wrote: > It would appear that the pending (0321) mask of Qt3 will break > sci-misc/qcad, sci-chemistry/xdrawchem and x11-misc/glunarclock. > [..] > > Thank you, > Robert Bradbury The decision about removing Qt3 has been made 9 months ago, the decision about the upcoming mask has been made 4 months ago. So you had all the time to move to Qt4. We aint gonna maintain a package ( or library if you prefer ) that has been abandoned from upstream a long time ago. So if you still want to use it, please add kde-sunset overlay. We dont have neither the manpower nor the time to patch/fix/maintainer/etc/etc/ Qt3 anymore. However, we DO offer you like 6 different versions of Qt4 *4.5.3 *4.6.1 *4.6.2 *4.6. *4.7. *4.7-prerelease ( soon ) *4. Which we actively maintain. We decided to move forward and we are aware that few of our users might not like it. If you still want a working Qt3, please take care of it on kde-sunset Thanks -- Markos Chandras (hwoarang) Gentoo Linux Developer Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org
Re: [gentoo-dev] Qt3 mask breaks significant science packages
On 12 March 2010 16:59, Alexis Ballier wrote: > Or like the old gtk-1: completely abandon the package and let the > consumers upgrade slowly. IMHO this is the less annoying approach for > everyone. Abandoned packages do not belong in the portage tree. That's why we have a treecleaners project. Cheers, -- Ben de Groot Gentoo Linux developer (qt, media, lxde, desktop-misc) __
Re: [gentoo-dev] Qt3 mask breaks significant science packages
On 12 March 2010 14:18, Robert Bradbury wrote: > It would appear that the pending (0321) mask of Qt3 will break > sci-misc/qcad, sci-chemistry/xdrawchem and x11-misc/glunarclock. The mask has already been in place since March 1st. > a) Has research been done to determine whether there are replacements for > these packages and why aren't they suggested in the mask comments? See the discussion in the relevant bugs and on the forums. For qcad see bug #284896 and for xdrawchem bug #299588. Glunarclock is unrelated. > b) If one is forced to run Qt3 in order to support these older packages, is > there *good* documentation on how to do this (and why isn't this > suggested in the mask comments)? Because package.mask is not the right place for documentation. It does refer to bug #283429, the tracker bug for the Qt3 mask and removal. This in turn refers to our announcement [1] which mentions that Qt3 and packages depending on it will remain available in the community-maintained kde-sunset overlay. > So before there is a rush to remove ebuilds it should be asked > whether it is possible to produce a static build and/or whether there is a > clear path provided for the retention of "legacy" packages? There is no rush. We first announced this in July 2009 [2] and then again in December [1]. We have given every opportunity to find appropriate upgrade paths. As mentioned, users who for some reason need or want to keep using legacy packages can use the kde-sunset overlay. 1: http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev-announce/msg_f295c1c2d9d70238d289de3a7ed5bf5c.xml 2: http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev-announce/msg_d851e05567d538b662f34de8dfdb7316.xml Cheers, -- Ben de Groot Gentoo Linux developer (qt, media, lxde, desktop-misc) __
Re: [gentoo-dev] Qt3 mask breaks significant science packages
On Friday 12 of March 2010 17:17:01 Fabian Groffen wrote: > On 12-03-2010 08:46:34 -0700, Denis Dupeyron wrote: > > That said they were perfectly entitled to make the decision of not > > wanting to maintain qt3 any longer. The only advice I can give is that > > all disgruntled users and developers create a qt3 project and > > adopt/unmask/re-commit the qt3 libraries for maintainers of packages > > who need it. I doubt this will happen as this could have been done a > > long time ago, but it's never too late. > > Didn't we have a graveyard thing/overlay somewhere some day? Some users > might happily prefer to use stuff that's treecleaned, or removed due > security issues. If removal of stuff would mean it's dumped in there it > can be easily used by users and more easily readded later afterwards, if > need arises. Yes, it's called kde-sunset and it contains KDE3 and should contain Qt3 applications (maybe it does, may not all of them though) removed from tree recently. It's not graveyard really as some users actively maintain this overlay. http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/kde-sunset.git (layman -a kde-sunset) -- regards MM
Re: [gentoo-dev] Qt3 mask breaks significant science packages
On 12/03/10 17:17, Fabian Groffen wrote: > On 12-03-2010 08:46:34 -0700, Denis Dupeyron wrote: >> That said they were perfectly entitled to make the decision of not >> wanting to maintain qt3 any longer. The only advice I can give is that >> all disgruntled users and developers create a qt3 project and >> adopt/unmask/re-commit the qt3 libraries for maintainers of packages >> who need it. I doubt this will happen as this could have been done a >> long time ago, but it's never too late. > > Didn't we have a graveyard thing/overlay somewhere some day? Some users > might happily prefer to use stuff that's treecleaned, or removed due > security issues. If removal of stuff would mean it's dumped in there it > can be easily used by users and more easily readded later afterwards, if > need arises. > > As we have the "overlay depend on overlay" support now, we could easily put those packages into the sci overlay, if there would be a qt3 support/lib overlay. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Qt3 mask breaks significant science packages
Le vendredi 12 mars 2010 à 16:59 +0100, Alexis Ballier a écrit : > On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:46:34 -0700 > Denis Dupeyron wrote: > > [...] > > That said they were perfectly entitled to make the decision of not > > wanting to maintain qt3 any longer. The only advice I can give is that > > all disgruntled users and developers create a qt3 project and > > adopt/unmask/re-commit the qt3 libraries for maintainers of packages > > who need it. I doubt this will happen as this could have been done a > > long time ago, but it's never too late. > > Or like the old gtk-1: completely abandon the package and let the > consumers upgrade slowly. IMHO this is the less annoying approach for > everyone. Well the discussion about dropping glib-1 and gtk-1 pops up once in a while in the herd. The removal hasn't been done yet because we focus more on packages that pops most on bugzilla for example. -- Gilles Dartiguelongue Gentoo
Re: [gentoo-dev] Qt3 mask breaks significant science packages
On 12-03-2010 08:46:34 -0700, Denis Dupeyron wrote: > That said they were perfectly entitled to make the decision of not > wanting to maintain qt3 any longer. The only advice I can give is that > all disgruntled users and developers create a qt3 project and > adopt/unmask/re-commit the qt3 libraries for maintainers of packages > who need it. I doubt this will happen as this could have been done a > long time ago, but it's never too late. Didn't we have a graveyard thing/overlay somewhere some day? Some users might happily prefer to use stuff that's treecleaned, or removed due security issues. If removal of stuff would mean it's dumped in there it can be easily used by users and more easily readded later afterwards, if need arises. -- Fabian Groffen Gentoo on a different level
Re: [gentoo-dev] Qt3 mask breaks significant science packages
On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:46:34 -0700 Denis Dupeyron wrote: [...] > That said they were perfectly entitled to make the decision of not > wanting to maintain qt3 any longer. The only advice I can give is that > all disgruntled users and developers create a qt3 project and > adopt/unmask/re-commit the qt3 libraries for maintainers of packages > who need it. I doubt this will happen as this could have been done a > long time ago, but it's never too late. Or like the old gtk-1: completely abandon the package and let the consumers upgrade slowly. IMHO this is the less annoying approach for everyone. Alexis. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Qt3 mask breaks significant science packages
On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 6:18 AM, Robert Bradbury wrote: > It would appear that the pending (0321) mask of Qt3 will break > sci-misc/qcad, sci-chemistry/xdrawchem and x11-misc/glunarclock. I'm not concerned but I feel sympathy for those who use these packages and many others. The decision from the qt project to remove qt3 and all its dependencies from the tree is suboptimal to say the least. A library project should be at the service of those using the library, not dictating to those using it. That said they were perfectly entitled to make the decision of not wanting to maintain qt3 any longer. The only advice I can give is that all disgruntled users and developers create a qt3 project and adopt/unmask/re-commit the qt3 libraries for maintainers of packages who need it. I doubt this will happen as this could have been done a long time ago, but it's never too late. Denis.
[gentoo-dev] Qt3 mask breaks significant science packages
It would appear that the pending (0321) mask of Qt3 will break sci-misc/qcad, sci-chemistry/xdrawchem and x11-misc/glunarclock. These are fairly significant science packages for which there are no current (qt4) or "equivalent" packages. While on one hand it may not do much harm to mask Qt3 based games packages (which I believe has already been done), it is entirely another thing when one goes masking significant science packages for which there may be no substitutes (e.g. qcad and xdrawchem). So, an end user (e.g. a Gentoo user who is not a Gentoo developer) is forced to ask: a) Has research been done to determine whether there are replacements for these packages and why aren't they suggested in the mask comments? b) If one is forced to run Qt3 in order to support these older packages, is there *good* documentation on how to do this (and why isn't this suggested in the mask comments)? While I am in general in favor of migrating to the most recent packages, there are cases where packages will still work reliably well with older libraries (and would likely work forever if there were "static" build options). So before there is a rush to remove ebuilds it should be asked whether it is possible to produce a static build and/or whether there is a clear path provided for the retention of "legacy" packages? Thank you, Robert Bradbury