Re: Overall bitrot, package reviews and fast(er) unmaintained package removals
On 06/04/16 21:19, Wookey wrote:
>> > .. perhaps be more aggressive in
>> > removing software that's no longer useful and just lies in the archive
>> > dormant.
> The fact that Debian has a lot of software is a genuine benefit. Just
> because stuff is old, does not mean it is no longer useful. The
> problem is that we don't really know how to distinguish between
> old-and-just-cruft and old-and-still-handy.
The popcon stats may help.
For the packages in Debian Science and Debian Med I tend to think that
it accommodates a bunch of packages that mostly are of historic value
now. People may use them to compare how well their new methods compare
against the old stuff but the package itself may not be used that much
and the authors never did much maintenance beyond their scientific
questions, anyway - which is also because of the grant-driven funding
schemes and the scientics moving institutions after some 1-5 years.
Those archeological gems I consider to be valuable, in particular when
original binaries were only offered for the then common but today unseen
platforms like DEC, SGI and Sun. So, we have old-and-just-craft,
old-and-still-handy, and some first-step-on-the-moon kind of packages.
Steffen
That said, now, with Debian-Astro established, do we possibly find
someone to adopt the code and emulators for the Apollo missions
(http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/) for us? And, no, I do not really think
that footprints on the moon are good for much scientific benchmarking.
Although, who knows, some extraterrestrials may find those more easily
accessible than any such on earth. Uh, bed time.
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