On Thu, 2016-04-07 at 01:02 +0000, Potter, Tim (HPE Linux Support) wrote: > On 7 Apr 2016, at 10:52 AM, Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> > wrote: > > > > > Given the low quality and lack of unit tests in many scientific > > applications, how confident can we be that the 'old' packages (that > > have now built with newer toolchains and libraries) actually still > > produce the same results they used to? If we are not, even that > > historic value is lost. > > Full archive rebuilds are done every so often. The switchover to the > gcc-5 toolchain > was an example and everything was rebuilt at least once during that > time. My understanding > is that packages are dropped if they don't build in this case, and > no-one steps up to fix them > within a reasonable (months) period of time. You are missing the point, which is that while they still build with the new toolchain (possibly after a developer without intimate knowledge of the program makes a best-effort fix) we don't know that they behave the same way. Ben. -- Ben Hutchings Who are all these weirdos? - David Bowie, reading IRC for the first time
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