[Debian-ports-devel] Moving powerpc to Debian Ports

[Aurelien Jarno]

On 2016-11-02 16:49, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> On 11/02/2016 03:13 PM, Aurelien Jarno wrote:
> >> Well, I don't remember the exact chronology, but I *did* ask a lot of
> >> people during DebConf15 to keep it, including you. My request was
> >> ignored back then as well.
> > 
> > That's plainly wrong. During Debconf 15, sparc was /already* removed
> > from ftp-master, so it was not possible to *keep* it.
> > 
> > What you asked was to create it back on debian-ports, and I explained
> > you it was probably a better idea to work on the existing sparc64 port
> > instead of rebootstrapping sparc.
> 
> That's why I said, I don't remember the exact chronology. I did not insist
> that it happened that exact way. What I said is that we removed something
> people were using. It would have been enough to look at Debian Popcon
> to see that sparc is something people were/are using. Heck, there are still
> around 70 counted installations for sparc despite not being updated anymore
> for months.

Users are a thing, but then who does the job? You simply can't keep a
port that nobody maintains! 

For the record DSA desperately tried to find help to get the sparc build
daemons running without crashing every other day due to kernel issues. We
have been even in danger of not being to able to provide security updates for
wheezy due to that.

> You shouldn't expect users to be present on various Debian mailing lists
> and you should not assume no one complaining on any of the lists means
> that no one cares about a port being removed. What we should look at
> first are popcon numbers and then we should start surveys or something
> similar.

I expect users who care about a port to be subscribed to the
corresponding mailing list. Maybe I am wrong, but what I am sure is that
porters must be subscribed to such a list.

Aurelien

-- 
Aurelien Jarno                          GPG: 4096R/1DDD8C9B
aurelien at aurel32.net                 http://www.aurel32.net
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