Re: Removing the attic package

[Efraim Flashner]

On Mon, Sep 05, 2016 at 10:20:36AM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Leo Famulari <address@hidden> skribis:
> 
> >
> > Do we have any guidelines about "retiring" packages?
> 
> Not yet!
> 
> Of course there’s a fine line here: we cannot systematically retire
> packages “just” because they have bugs (all of them do ;-)).  So we have
> to be cautious.  In this case, it can be considered a serious bug in the
> package’s core functionality, *and* there’s a fix provided by a fork, so
> I see no obstacle in removing it.
> 
> What do people think?
> 
> Thanks,
> Ludo’.
> 

I think it makes sense to change the description that this package is
slated for eventual removal. Another example is pinentry. We now have 4
pinentry packages, and the original pinentry package just points to
pinentry-gtk. I think it would make sense in that case to change the
description to something like `the pinentry package in guix is
depreciated, please remove it and install pinentry-gtk to retain the
same functinality' or something along those lines.

In this case something about attic having serious unpatched flaws, is
unmaintained, and that borg is a fork & continuation of it, would be a
good change.

That might keep new people from installing it, but how would we get
people who have already installed it to uninstall it? Or to see the
message?

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Efraim Flashner   <address@hidden>   אפרים פלשנר
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