Deprecation policies (was: svn commit: r347338 - in head/net-p2p: . microdc2 microdc2/files)

[Gerald Pfeifer]

On Fri, 7 Mar 2014, Alexey Dokuchaev wrote:
> microdc2 is useful port; and given how easy it was to unbreak it, I don't
> understand how could it possibly slip into abyss in the first place. :(
> This is why I generally do not support deprecation due to compile failure.

Have you done any larger infrastructure work recently?

I have worked on several, and I can tell it is painful.  It is painful 
because of all those semi-broken and kind-of-broken and partially mended 
and dying and reanimated and undead ports in the tree.  Ports that still 
do not support staging.  Ports that fail to build on most versions I test.


If anything, I think we need to consider becoming more aggressive:

A port that fails to build on either of the latest two major release 
branches for X months gets deprecated.

A port that does not support staging by my birthday gets deprecated.

Any such ports that have been deprecated for two months and not seen
any work to fix them get removed.

Gerald


PS: I am not asking for perfection and appreciate all the help I have
received from Thierry, Mat, Sunpoet, René, John, David, Martin, Decke,
the B brothers and others with their ports and mine and infrastructure.