[Mageia-dev] Package drop request: ruby-ParseTree

Mon Dec 10 23:42:45 CET 2012

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 03:55:05PM +0100, Guillaume Rousse wrote:
+> Le 10/12/2012 14:01, Colin Guthrie a écrit :
+> >I see absolutely no problem with this and I don't consider this
+> >something that's done as a "side effect", rather it's a quite deliberate
+> >and concious mechanism to remove no longer supported packages from a
+> >users machine.
+> Shikamaru never asked about end user machines, but about mirrors.
+> Hence my point:
+> - if you just want to remove some files from the mirrors, ask an admin
+> - if you also want to remove old packages from end users machines,
+> first think twice about the expected result, then update
+> task-obsolete
+> 
+> And on the more general interest of using obsolete tags, I'd rather
+> suggest to refrain from using them without a very good reason. In
+> ten years of contribution, I've never seen the mandriva bugzilla
+> drowned by bug reports about unsupported packages (the main argument
+> in support of the current 'thou shall obsoletes anything that is not
+> supported anymore' frenzy), whereas I've seen at least two recent
+> painful episodes in cauldron caused by careless packagers...
+Thanks, that pretty much clarify my intent indeed.
+
+At first I didn’t even know task-obsolete existed in the first place so
+I just followed the procedure Johnny explained. After understanding this
+mechanism I don’t feel it was the right thing to do in this case.
+
+First, because it’s a small ruby library that’s probably used by only a
+handful of people. Second, this library is removed because it’s eol’d
+upstream, but also because no other package use it. It seems to me that
+it can safely be removed from the mirrors, but removing it from boxes
+via task-obsolete seems a bit overkill to me, because that package would
+have been orphaned because nothing requires it (unless someone
+deliberately installed it, which I doubt)
+
+I’m not yet sure about this but the way I see task-obsolete is that it
+should only be used for end-applications, and even then I’m not
+comfortable with silently removing things from people’s machines, I’d
+rather use Conflicts instead.
+
+Regards,
+> 
+> -- 
+> BOFH excuse #234:
+> 
+> Someone is broadcasting pygmy packets and the router doesn't know
+> how to deal with them.
+-- 
+Rémy CLOUARD
+() ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail
+/\ www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary attachments
+