RFD: A modest proposal #2: unsupported

[Lapo Luchini]

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As Christopher Faylor said in 
http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2003-04/msg00320.html

|Again, I'm not that much of a dictator.  I was expecting that there
|would be some people leaping up in favor who might convince me this was
|a good idea.  There are some other problems that I see with the proposal
|and I was waiting to see if anyone raised them and offered suggestions.

Another possible problem could be that people with not much time to 
spare (e.g.: me) would be tempted to create the unsupported package and 
not take the honors *and burdens* of package mantainership.
So, many packaes that nowadays are "official" would wound up in the 
"unofficial" bin.

Take, e.g., my rsync package: ok, I never managed to correct the 
threading issue it has, and it takes me some time to release it (mostly 
waiting for a slot of free time, packaging with the generic build script 
is quite straightforward) but has ever someone said "ehy Lapo, why don't 
you abdicate you mantainership on that package, so that I can mantain it 
better?" so I bet if this "unsupported" thing was official at the time I 
decided to mantain it it would still be "unofficial".

There would be, though, the great benefits Charles said:

|Yet, it's a shame to force folks to solve all of the basic
|porting problems I've already solved

but I think there could be a different way to try to get the benefit 
without the possible burdens of Charles's proposal:
having a mere *list* of unsupported packages with maybe just a link to 
the "setup-compatible directory", posted maybe monthly on cygwin-apps 
(it's intended audience is people that is *already* thinking about 
mantainer ship... it's a "adopt-me" list and not a "use this at will and 
then complain" list) just to "remember" people that those packages have 
most of the work done and just need to be spiced up a bit (and to be 
mantained!) to be official.

This could maybe help remember people that to mantain a package is not 
an exoteric thing nor much difficult (well, it depends on the 
cygwin-specific problems the package have...)

What do you think?

To cite Charles again:

|Now, about that /opt tree...

Now, about that path to generic-build-script to add gpg signatures to 
source packages... 0=)
(yup, I know generic scrip has changed, I'll update the patch ASAP)
(yup, I know, I'm a cypher-freak)

- --
Lapo 'Raist' Luchini
lapo@lapo.it (PGP & X.509 keys available)
http://www.lapo.it (ICQ UIN: 529796)
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