[maemo-community] Periodic cleanup of Extras-Devel?

[From: Ed Bartosh]

2010/1/15 Anderson Lizardo <anderson.lizardo at openbossa.org>:
> On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 7:54 AM, Ed Bartosh <bartosh at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 2010/1/15 Simon Pickering <S.G.Pickering at bath.ac.uk>:
>>>
>>>> > I think the interface Niels writes will give the developers
>>>> > more control so
>>>> > some of the control issues will be mitigated.
>>>
>>> Allowing developers to remove old versions of their packages would be
>>> the best plan for cleaning up imo
>> I really doubt that. From my point of view it's better to do clean it
>> up automatically.
>> Why to bother developers if trivial script can do this job faster and
>> much better?
>
> I don't know if you saw my e-mail saying that some of PyMaemo's newest
> Python bindings (e.g. python-location) are *only* in extras-devel
> because no package in extras-testing uses it yet and therefore there
> is no version in -testing. Note that does not mean that some developer
> is not already using these packages but have not uploaded their
> application yet.
>
> We also have some newer versions of the bindings "waiting" to be
> pushed to -testing by some application explicitly depending on that
> version. The problem is, if no current application developer has a
> specific need for these newer versions, they will stay in extras-devel
> for a long time still.
>
> What would happen if -devel is automatically purged? Will we have to
> re-upload packages every time this happens? How are application
> developers writing their applications (not yet pushed to any
> repository) supposed to use any of the new bindings in -devel if they
> might disappear at any time?
>
> Suggestions are welcome,
> --
It depends on how automatic cleaning is implemented. If it's
implemented properly everything will be OK :)
I don't want to go to boring details right now. Just wanted to
emphasize my opinion: cleaning should be automatic. Otherwise we'll
have the same situation as now. May be just a bit better, may be even
worse.
At least we should try to do that. Considering manual cleaning as an
option from the very beginning is bad thing, I believe.

-- 
BR,
Ed