[csw-maintainers] Killing the stable release

[Ben Walton]

Excerpts from jeff's message of Thu Mar 15 23:48:24 -0400 2012:

Hi Jeff,

> Yes, please explain the status of pkg-get.  I have a complex UI
> front-end that I use based upon pkg-get, so I have been reluctant to
> migrate to pkgutil.  What are the ramifications of continuing to use
> pkg-get?

The pkg-get tool is deprecated.  It's still there if you really want
it but it's not supported and if we ever made incompatible catalog
changes (not planned right now, but...) you'd need to update pkgutil
to get the new functionality.  Any of the proposed changes to catalog
that I've seen generally centre around changing the format to
something like xml or json or yaml.  In that case, we could likely do
a side-by-side (2 catalogs) and have tools use the one they know how
to handle, with reduced functionality for the tradtional formats as
the consequence.  (Don't hold me to this, it's all just hypothetical
right now. :) )

> Also, could you explain just how stable "current/testing" is?  I see
> that a bunch of packages were recently added, but I'm wondering just
> how safe it is to update against this.  I really don't have a clear
> picture of what is happening with opencsw these days.

Most users should stick to the dublin branch at this point.  It's
going to provide the most stability.  I run my stuff on unstable but I
don't update it to bleeding edge all the time...

> Are there any plans for resuming the weekly status updates for new
> and updated packages that Phil use to issue?

This would be easy to hack up, I think but it's not a priority for
me.  Is it something you'd tackle?  It could be as simple as parsing
the atom feed weekly for any entries within the last week and
reformatting them for an email broadcast...

Hope this helps.

Thanks
-Ben
--
Ben Walton
Systems Programmer - CHASS
University of Toronto
C:416.407.5610 | W:416.978.4302