garbage-collector.rpm ? (Was: Re: Summary - Broken dependencies in Fedora Extras - 2007-03-03)

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le Lun 12 mars 2007 16:34, Jesse Keating a écrit :
> On Sunday 11 March 2007 15:39:53 Callum Lerwick wrote:
>> Ummm, how about we just do something like debian does. Say we have a
>> package, "foo-1.0-1.fc6" that has been dropped. Release a new version of
>> the package, "foo-1.0-2.fc6" that is a dummy package that contains
>> nothing, and has a %description along the lines of "Package foo is
>> obsolete. This is a dummy package that ensures its removal. This package
>> can be removed safely."
>
> Why do we want to go out of our way to remove potentially still usable
> software from people's machines?  Just because Fedora doesn't maintain it
> anymore doesn't mean it automatically becomes unusable software that we
> should forcibly remove from people's machines.

IMHO we should do this reality check every release.

Finding out a package is dead because the update removed it is relatively
painless. One just has to reinstall the previous version¹²

Finding out a package is dead because bad things happen³ and investigation
shows it was retired months/years before is another thing

You don't do users any favour by silently leaving unsupported stuff on
their systems. An early warning with short-term workarounds is better than
full-blown failure when it's too late to do anything.

¹ this implies the retirement procedure allows it
² and hopefully investigate alternatives or adopt the package
³ including security problems

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot