Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2011 12:14:19 +0200 From: Michal Varga <varga.michal@gmail.com> To: Doug Barton <dougb@FreeBSD.org> Cc: Tilman =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Keskin=F6z?= <arved@FreeBSD.org>, freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Time to mark portupgrade deprecated? Message-ID: <1311588859.1812.104.camel@xenon> In-Reply-To: <4E2D3A84.7020909@FreeBSD.org> References: <CAF6rxg=TfxbKJwbcm6_c8P7m6%2B-pzvB9SpwKB99%2BLDe4OM%2BeLA@mail.gmail.com> <4E2D1C36.7060400@FreeBSD.org> <1311583851.1812.81.camel@xenon> <4E2D3A84.7020909@FreeBSD.org>
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On Mon, 2011-07-25 at 02:42 -0700, Doug Barton wrote: > Change is hard. :) In fact, that's the whole point of the story, ironically or not. > I have no objections to someone (or some group) choosing to maintain > portupgrade. I've always said that I don't regard portmaster and > portupgrade to be in competition. > > However if no one steps up to maintain it, portupgrade will eventually > bitrot and become unusable. So for all of you saying "save portupgrade!" > this is something you seriously need to consider. There is a difference in "saving" portupgrade and simply cold murdering it from behind just because it's that particular time of the month for a 'change' (cough). Believe or not, as a decade long user, I hated portupgrade from the day one, and learned to hate it even more as the code base bloated and everybody lost a slightest idea how it even holds together to the point where it is today. I can still (though barely) remember times when portupgrade was actually spending 95% cpu time on compilation and rest on "fixing / saving / database / dependencies", in contrast to the current 30% compilation time + 70% portupgrade database fractal magic disco that nobody gets anymore. That said, I don't propose (nor volunteer, for the love of god) to maintain portupgrade - I just say - leave it be. As was already said before me - change the handbook/documentation, feel free to wipe all tracks of portupgrade from it, that doesn't matter even slightest to the current portupgrade user base, as we don't read that anyway. But I have machines and scripts that need to be kept up to date and will need to be for years to come, and portupgrade is the current mission critical tool for that. Change is hard, *especially* when there is nothing broken with stuff that already works. "Unmaintained" portupgrade is not a security threat, it's not a network service, it may have bugs that nobody cares about to fix anymore, but most people [citation needed] don't care about them, they're worked around for years, and a stable bug is almost as good as a feature, isn't it? Again, as you said - portmaster is not a replacement for portupgrade. I have no objections in its promotion to new users as the new, one and only "approved" way of managing ports, but this in no way cuts it for currently deployed portupgrade setups, where portupgrade works 'just fine' (and can work the same for years to come). Deprecate it, or kill it, and you will only force many current users to keep a local copy, because it's still easier than a change. Is there any win in that? m. -- Michal Varga, Stonehenge (Gmail account)
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