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Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:06:36 +0200
From: Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.org>
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Cc: FreeBSD-Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>,
	freebsd-ports@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Auto-saving distfiles on freebsd
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cpghost wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:51:10 +0200
> Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.org> wrote:
> 
>> cpghost wrote:
>>> On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 11:47:04PM -0700, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>>>> Another problem with ports is that all of them like pulling the
>>>> original source from the author's site.  I've had a few where the
>>>> author released the code under GPL then a few years later lost
>>>> interest, stopped paying whatever ISP he had the main site for
>>>> the program at, and the porter also lost interest in the project
>>>> and never bothered obtaining the last available tarfile from
>>>> the authors site and uploading it to freebsd, then both
>>>> disappeared. Another one I can recall is the gated code, similar
>>>> issue.
>>> Why not add this to pointyhat scripts? Just upload a copy of every
>>> *new* distfile ever encountered from the author's page to freebsd
>>> (unless there are legal constraints not to do so, of course)?
>> We've regularly collected and published port distfiles for at least a 
>> decade (with increasingly higher frequency as disk space came to 
>> permit).  It may come as no surprise that Ted is talking out of his
>> ass again :)
>>
>> Kris
> 
> Ah, thanks! Good to know, and it's good news! :)
> 
> Will distfiles for ports that are no longer in the tree
> remain there as well, so that these ports can still be
> compiled with an older ports tree (yes, I know about the
> hairy security and dependency issues involved with old
> unmaintained and even dead ports...)?

Yes, as I mentioned in another reply it's been years since I have had to 
clean out old distfiles for space reasons, and there's no other need to 
do that so they will remain indefinitely.

Kris