Re: Proposed ports deprecation and removal policy

On 2024-02-28 11:22, Florian Smeets wrote:
> Dear ports community,
> 
> as the removal of ports is a recurring source of friction and dispute we 
> would
> like to add a ports removal and deprecation policy to the porters handbook.
> 
> We tried to find a sensible middle ground between too fast removal and 
> keeping
> unmaintained and abandoned upstream software in our ports tree forever.
> 
> When can or should ports be deprecated or removed?
> 
> This policy should give some guidance on when ports can or should be 
> removed. In
> general ports should not be removed without reason but if a port blocks 
> progress
> it should be deprecated and subsequently removed. In general, if a ports 
> blocks
> progress for some time it will be removed so that progress can be made. For 
> more
> details see below.
> 
> 
> Ports can be removed immediately if one of the following conditions is met:
> 
> - Upstream distfile is no longer available from the original source/mirror 
> (Our
> and other distcaches e.g. Debian, Gentoo, etc do not count as "available")
> - Upstream WWW is unavailable: deprecate, remove after 3 months
> - BROKEN for more than 6 months
> - has known vulnerabilities that weren’t addressed in the ports tree for 
> more than 3 months
> 
> 
> A port can be deprecated and subsequently removed if:
> 
> - Upstream declared the version EOL or officially stopped development. 
> DEPRECATED
> should be set as soon as the planned removal date is know. (It is up to the
> maintainer if they want to remove the port immediately after the EOL date or 
> if
> they want keep the port for some time with backported patches. Option two is 
> *not*
> possible without backporting patches, see vulnerable ports) The general 
> suggestion
> is that EOL versions should not stay in the ports tree for more than 3 
> months
> without justification.
> - The port does not adapt to infrastructure changes (i.e. USE_STAGE, 
> MANPREFIX,
> compiler updates, etc.) within 6 months. Ports should be set to DEPRECATED 
> after 3
> months and can be removed after 6
> 
> 
> Reasons that do not warrant removal of a port:
> 
> - Software hasn’t seen a release in a long time
> - Upstream looks inactive for a long time
> 
> Florian (on behalf of portmgr)
Thank you very much for your attempt to set precedence in this area. Your 
proposal seems
well tempered and prudent. Thank you. Consider this a "+1" from me. :)

--Chris

-- 
--Chris Hutchinson