[maemo-developers] Icons are just a few bytes, right ?

[From: Attila Csipa]

On Friday 12 March 2010 08:36:19 Marius Vollmer wrote:
> ext Attila Csipa <maemo at csipa.in.rs> writes:
> > There are probably many better ways to do this, but a quick and dirty
> > solution would be to remove the icon from the older version in the repo
> > when a new version is pushed to the repo.
>
> What about removing old versions completely?  Old versions are useful,
> but only quite rarely.  If you want, you can keep a separate
> "extras-history" repo with all versions ever that people can use if they
> really need to get obsolete versions.

Certainly a good option, but perhaps not as clear-cut as in the case of icons 
(=not 100% useless as old icons). There are a few potential problems with old 
ver removal, though. Some might depend on newer versions of libs than others, 
so not every dupe is superfluous and this check needs to be very careful in 
order not to break other apps. Another problem might be you cannot 
retroactively set dependencies (i.e. if you realize your app does not work 
with a brand new version of a lib, you cannot put in a dependency on the old 
version as it has already been archived - or if you do, you risk 
cross-repository deps, which is a nasty topic in itself).

If we DO accept that, though, some more grep magic reveals that of the 7726 
total packages in extras-devel, 2892 are unique, so almost two-thirds are 
duplicates. The extras-(devel?)-history is a good idea also in the way that 
it falls in line with the notion that the source packages of every version 
should be preserved (even if we eventually delete the binaries from 
extras-devel). Another sideeffect would be that package operations would be 
drastically sped up (everyone who uses extras-devel knows that the busy 
indicator goes around quite a few times on every operation, mostly as a 
result of the sheer size/number of package descriptions).

Regards,
Attila