Re: Unmaintained Packages

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

On Tue, Aug 12, 2003 at 11:10:27AM -0600, Joel Baker wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 12, 2003 at 11:23:01AM +0100, Colin Watson wrote:
> > In my experience, this is almost always better handled by gradual
> > rewriting than by a total ground-up effort. You get validation at
> > each stage; it's easier for other people to review the changes and
> > confirm that functionality and correctness haven't been lost; and
> > you can introduce improvements to users more quickly because they
> > don't have to wait until a huge rewrite-from-scratch is stable
> > enough to deploy. There are exceptions, but I believe they're very
> > rare.
> 
> There's one problem that dpkg has which most other things don't, which
> would make 'gradual change' into an extremely painful thing, if even
> practical: the Debian release cycle.
> 
> For good or bad, Debian releases are taking *at least* 2 years, these
> days. And dpkg, being part of the core setup, can only make
> significant changes in 2x that amount (one release to introduce new
> stuff and deprecate old, one release to get rid of the old).

That's only a concern if there's some old to get rid of, and even then
only if it's not possible to keep the existing interface seen by
packages. I think this applies to mercifully few dpkg changes. In
particular, it doesn't apply to new features, provided that there's some
way you can test them reasonably before packages in the archive are in a
position to use them. The Breaks: field (less violent version of
Conflicts:, discussed many years ago; see
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9710/msg00643.html) is a good
example of this.

Given the number of packages in the archive and the human effort
involved in changing all of them, we should be avoiding major interface
changes in dpkg wherever possible anyway.

> 4 years per gradual change is not exactly a stunningly good time to
> try to rewrite things piecemeal.

There's a big difference between "redesign the interface" and "rewrite
internally".

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                  [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]