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Date:      Tue, 5 Mar 2013 21:27:35 +0100
From:      Alexander Leidinger <Alexander@Leidinger.net>
To:        Eitan Adler <lists@eitanadler.com>
Cc:        emulation@freebsd.org, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ren=C3=A9?= Ladan <r.c.ladan@gmail.com>
Subject:   Re: removing old linux ports
Message-ID:  <20130305212735.0000038b@unknown>
In-Reply-To: <CAF6rxgkC-85KpC5iZc462o8ZoOA0RsF0On=q8taBd9xSwoMPeg@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <51349535.5040800@freebsd.org> <5134AB8C.2050202@gmail.com> <20130304214254.00004f27@unknown> <CAF6rxgkC-85KpC5iZc462o8ZoOA0RsF0On=q8taBd9xSwoMPeg@mail.gmail.com>

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On Mon, 4 Mar 2013 21:06:58 -0500
Eitan Adler <lists@eitanadler.com> wrote:

> On 4 March 2013 15:42, Alexander Leidinger <Alexander@leidinger.net>
> wrote:
> > It would be nice if the patches results in a nice explanation for
> > the user trying to use some linux stuff on 7.x.
>=20
> -1.  7.x is now EoL and we should be removing compatibility cruft as
> soon as the ports tree is tagged.
> Ports in general are no longer guaranteed to function at all on 7.x
> machines.

"no longer guaranteed" is different from "it's known to not work". The
change Ren=E9 presents is of the second form. As such userfriendlyness
mandates that there is a message which tells in clear text that it does
not work instead of letting the user run into a wall without
explanation.

As soon as you remove compatibility shims (but the make syntax is
still compatible), you should make a test at the beginning of
bsd.port.mk which then tells the user that the ports collection doesn't
work on OSVERSION < xxx anymore. Just because we know that 7.x is EoL
doesn't mean that users know about it too, and a clear message is much
more helpful than an obscure error message or a silent failure
(e.g. installing linux ports which are not compatible).

Bye,
Alexander.

--=20
http://www.Leidinger.net    Alexander @ Leidinger.net: PGP ID =3D B0063FE7
http://www.FreeBSD.org       netchild @ FreeBSD.org  : PGP ID =3D 72077137



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