Deprecation of lang/python{15,20}

[Tim Middleton]

Bah, i shouldn't post this. But it's sunday night, and i'm avoiding toing 
other work i should have done for monday morning... and this list needs more 
posts... so what the heck... Just understand that I'm mostly playing devil's 
advocate (ie. wasting your time) below...  <-; 

On Sunday 25 April 2004 19:18, Mark Linimon wrote:
> 1. User confusion: what's the "right" version?  It also clutters up
> the port list web page.

Not much less confusion with 21 and 22 still there. Most poeple would figure 
out "ports/python" as the default I think; and those that wouldn't would 
likely take the highest number I'd think. Or just do a binary install from 
sysinstall. Or pick up the "right" version as the default dependancy from 
whatever python-needing port they are wanting to build.

> 2. Build resources: bento.FreeBSD.org continuously builds all packages
> both as a QA step, and to make them available to users who choose not

This, and just general 'cleanliness', of the ports on principle are the best 
arguments for the removal, I think. Give bento a break; a worthy cause. 
Active moves should be made to get rid of 2.1 and 2.2 as well as soon as 
possible on this principle. (Yeah, i know, it was suggested 2.1 is possibly 
of interest for compatibility with debian woody, old redhat, etc... 
perhaps... though not a goal i personally aspire to!)

> 3. Download time: currently, anyone who wants to track the ports
> collection needs to download the entire tarball or track the CVS files
> (IMHO, this is a bug, but ...)  In any case, the download time and

I agree; the ports tree is very, very big... and painfully long to extract. I 
doubt removing two ports is going ot help all that much though. And while the 
principle of cleanliness above might be used here, there's not all that many 
ports in the position that python is in of having multiple simultaneously 
active versions. (I'm a fan of misc/porteasy to solve this problem... lets me 
maintain a tree of more-or-less just the ports i use, updated via CVS fairly 
easily... has occassional problems, but mostly works... especially if hacked 
to use an anoncvs mirror... porteasy -a -u -I)

That being said, I have to maintain one old box with a fairly large python app 
on it which is restricted to Python 2.0 (the app isn't; just this box is!), 
and I'm not allowed to upgrade it. Perhaps i'm just bitter and want to share 
the multi-version misery. <-; (Unfortunately the box is not a FreeBSD box, so 
removing 2.0 from ports won't bother the owners...)

Okay, i'm done wasting everyone's time now. Delete away. I'll only be slightly 
sad to see 1.5 go... just for purely nostalgic reasons... it was the first 
version of Python to truly enlighten my programming path.... bon voyage 
Python 1.5 port, rest in peace. 

-- 
Tim Middleton | Cain Gang Ltd | There are a thousand hacking at the branches
x at veX.net     | www.Vex.Net   | of evil [but who] at the root. --Thoreau (W)