Is the list of unmaintained packages up-to-date?

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Is the list of unmaintained packages up-to-date?

Postby zooplah » Feb 4th, '13, 03:50

I'm wondering, because I use several of these packages (directly or indirectly), but Cauldron seems to have up-to-date versions.

There are a couple packages that are really unmaintained (i.e. abandoned by their developers). One is procmail. Maybe it should be replaced with maildrop. I started using maildrop recently and it works just fine, though I'm keeping procmail around because it's still listed as needed by fetchmail. It seem to me, as a complete amateur, that that could be solved just by having maildrop provide MailTransportAgent.

The other is CVS, required by gettext-devel. More specifically, it's required by autopoint. Doing a web search, it seems that Debian moved autopoint into a separate package to prevent this. Whether autopoint still requires CVS is another matter. It's possible not, since gettext has moved to git.
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Re: Is the list of unmaintained packages up-to-date?

Postby doktor5000 » Feb 5th, '13, 01:47

You mean this one: http://pkgsubmit.mageia.org/data/unmaintained.txt ?
That means that a package in there is assigned to "nobodoy" literally.
You may want to open up a bugreport or get into discussion with the developers via the relevant mailing list: https://www.zarb.org/pipermail/mageia-dev/
or even become a maintainer: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Becoming_a_Mageia_Packager
Cauldron is not for the faint of heart!
Caution: Hot, bubbling magic inside. May explode or cook your kittens!
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Re: Is the list of unmaintained packages up-to-date?

Postby zooplah » Feb 25th, '13, 00:54

doktor5000 wrote:You mean this one: http://pkgsubmit.mageia.org/data/unmaintained.txt ?

Yeah, that one. Is it static or is it updated regularly? There are several packages on there that seem part of the base system (cups, autoconf, automake), etc.

doktor5000 wrote:or even become a maintainer: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Becoming_a_Mageia_Packager

I don't think I could do that:
1. I've never successfully made an RPM from a spec file. All RPMs I make are made with checkinstall. Nor have I been able to make a package from a source RPM.
2. I assume you'd have to be able to cross-compile to produce versions for both i586 and x86_64. I unsuccessfully tried to set up a cross-compiler. I was able to get an x86_64 kernel from updates_testing working, though. I'm still unable to compile C/C++ programs for x86_64. I set up an FPC cross-compiler with no problem, though; after I got the x86_64 binutils, I just did a "make CPU_TARGET=x86_64". Now, binaries I make with it work on the x86_64 kernel, but on the i586 kernel, I get: "cannot execute binary file". So, I guess I really am running an x86_64 kernel (though, the installed programs and libraries are still i586).
3. I assume I'd need to run cauldron and be able to test on both cauldron and the latest release. I've tried to use cauldron and doing the UsrMove procedure borked my system twice. The first time, I used Colin Guthrie's RPM in updates_testing, and the second time, I did it manually. Both times, X wouldn't start after the move. However, I did install Mageia 3 Alpha 1 in Virtual Box, so I guess when final comes out, I'll just have to format and do a clean install.
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Re: Is the list of unmaintained packages up-to-date?

Postby doktor5000 » Feb 25th, '13, 08:13

zooplah wrote:
doktor5000 wrote:You mean this one: http://pkgsubmit.mageia.org/data/unmaintained.txt ?

Yeah, that one. Is it static or is it updated regularly? There are several packages on there that seem part of the base system (cups, autoconf, automake), etc.

I'm not really sure, but it's not the definitive information. A query for any package via mgarepo maintdb will show the truth. F.ex automake has been grabbed by Shlomi Fish, but the two others are unmaintained, but that doesn't necessarily meann they won't ever get updated.

BTW, packaging doesn't mean you need to know how to cross-compile, we have dedicatesd tools and a buildsystem for that ;)
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Re: Is the list of unmaintained packages up-to-date?

Postby boklm » Feb 25th, '13, 20:43

zooplah wrote:
doktor5000 wrote:You mean this one: http://pkgsubmit.mageia.org/data/unmaintained.txt ?

Yeah, that one. Is it static or is it updated regularly? There are several packages on there that seem part of the base system (cups, autoconf, automake), etc.

It's updated every 30 minutes.
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