On Wednesday 09 January 2013 19:59:35 dh wrote:
On Wednesday, January 09, 2013 12:02:12 PM Christophe Giboudeaux wrote:
Hi,
As decided during the last meeting, some repositories are going to be removed soon.
There are two reasons for this decision: - Saving disk space - Saving build power
Most certainly good reasons.
The following repositories will be removed in a couple days: - KDE:Release:46 - KDE:Release:47
The following flavors will be removed from the KDE:Unstable:Playground repository at the same time: - KDE_Release_47_openSUSE_12.1 - KDE_Release_48_openSUSE_12.1 - KDE_Release_49_openSUSE_12.1 - openSUSE_12.1
These changes will be applied in 7 days.
Thank you for the warning, I have a couple of questions / comments. (Guess I should participate more in the KDE team meetings) BTW, although I use some all caps phrases below, it is for emphasis, please do not assume anger or lack of appreciation of the work done by all those involved.
If you want the short version, My suggestions Please do not drop /KDE:/Unstable:/Playground/KDE_Release_49_openSUSE_12.1 KDE:Release:47 (for openSUSE 12.1) Drop the other repos as planned
Lengthy and persuasive arguments follow :-)
It seems to me that dropping /KDE:/Unstable:/Playground/KDE_Release_49_openSUSE_12.1 and KDE:Release:47 (for openSUSE12.1) is only a tiny step from openSUSE implicitly taking a position that ONLY the current release of the distro will be supported.
Please clarify who is "openSUSE" in this sentence. Or better, I'll do it: The KDE repositories are all maintained by community members. Of course SUSE employees are available to give some help, support and/or advices but keep in mind that most of the KDE repositories are maintained by regular users.
To quote the release notes for 12.1 "openSUSE 12.1 ships the KDE Plasma Desktop 4.7 as default workspace" I recognize that KDE4.7 is "Old" by distro standards, but to drop the recommended upgrade route for a release before it reaches EOL seems to be a bad move.
From the openSUSE Portal: "openSUSE products are backed with free software updates for 18 months after release."
This applies to the main repositories (ie, the OSS, update and non-OSS repositories). KDE 4.7 will still be in the OSS repository. Now let's face the reality, KDE:Release:46 and 47 (and 48 but that's not the subject) are not supported anymore by upstream and unless there's a important issue to fix, you will also get no update from OpenSUSE.
Although no specific mention is made of repositories outside the core release, it seems to me that if we make upgrade recommendations such as those on the en.opensuse.org/KDE_repositories page, then support for those recommendations should not be dropped until the distro reaches EOL.
I tend to disagree. Wasting build power and storage space just for the sake of having unmaintained repositories around doesn't really give a positive impression.
As for the Playground repos (my personal concern), in order to stay up to date with software such as Calligra Office and Digikam, users will be forced into a position where they MUST expect to upgrade their operating system at each release (every ~8 months).
And in order to make this repository maintenance easier, we also have to reduce the number of supported repositories. KDE:Release:410 will be created soon and we really have to avoid using more disk space. To give some numbers. As of today, there are 86 packages in KDE:Unstable:Playground built for 10 repositories and 2 archs (and I don't count the Telepathy packages living in a sub-repo). If you want to use unstable versions from the Playground repo, please consider using recent KDE and openSUSE versions. Christophe