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List:       gentoo-dev
Subject:    Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-dev-announce] Unused ebuild built_with_use  cleanup
From:       James Cloos <cloos () jhcloos ! com>
Date:       2009-10-26 23:21:08
Message-ID: m3ocntivwj.fsf () lugabout ! jhcloos ! org
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>>>>> "Petteri" == Petteri Räty <betelgeuse@gentoo.org> writes:

Petteri> Their maintainers should be active and switch their ebuilds to
Petteri> EAPI 2.  If they don't have an active maintainer, then do we
Petteri> want to keep live ebuilds for them around?

What possible benefit could be had from dropping ebuilds for no other
reason than their EAPI?

(Incidently, since I mentioned it as the one I remembered from the first
post, I see that git-9999 is EAPI 2 even though it does use built_with_use.)

Any mass removal should be as conservative as possible in the list of
things removed, just like anything which declares something unlawful
should be interpreted narrowly.

Your initial post indicated that you only wanted to drop ebuilds which
were unlikely to be in use by users.  Given the fact that most (all?)
live ebuilds are masked, any automated tests for the likelyhood that
an ebuild is in active use will, by definition, have false negatives
when dealing with live ebuilds.  (Where false negative means unlikely
to be in use even though it, in fact, is in use.)

And even if you did not intend to limit your removals as much as you
indicated, it is still wrong to remove anything which the userbase
actively uses.  These are not ebuilds which are broken, just ones
which, while functional, remain imperfect.

-JimC
-- 
James Cloos <cloos@jhcloos.com>         OpenPGP: 1024D/ED7DAEA6

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