MinGW - Minimalist GNU for Windows

On 2007-1-25 18:39 UTC, Earnie Boyd wrote:
> 
> I liked it the minute I created it but have never liked it since.  I 
> would like to rename the Proposed FRS package to Unmaintained.  
> Comments or objections?

I think the things labeled "Proposed" are something like development
snapshots that might eventually become "Current" releases, but need
more work and are not on the verge of being released (otherwise we'd
call them "release candidates").

If I've understood that correctly, then I'd suggest "Development" or
"Sandbox". To me, at least, the term "Unmaintained" suggests something
that was once maintained but is no longer. For instance, Mumit's egcs
releases are unmaintained.

On 1/25/07, Greg Chicares <chicares@...> wrote:

> If I've understood that correctly, then I'd suggest "Development" or
> "Sandbox".

Experimental?

-- 
--t.

Quoting Greg Chicares <chicares@...>:

> On 2007-1-25 18:39 UTC, Earnie Boyd wrote:
>>
>> I liked it the minute I created it but have never liked it since.  I
>> would like to rename the Proposed FRS package to Unmaintained.
>> Comments or objections?
>
> I think the things labeled "Proposed" are something like development
> snapshots that might eventually become "Current" releases, but need
> more work and are not on the verge of being released (otherwise we'd
> call them "release candidates").
>

At the time I created it I was thinking more of a stable release that 
based on download stats could get moved to Current.  Never happened.

> If I've understood that correctly, then I'd suggest "Development" or
> "Sandbox". To me, at least, the term "Unmaintained" suggests something
> that was once maintained but is no longer. For instance, Mumit's egcs
> releases are unmaintained.
>

We already have Snapshots.  The packages currently in Proposed are for 
the most extent Unmaintained.

Earnie Boyd
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Quoting techtonik <techtonik@...>:

> On 1/25/07, Greg Chicares <chicares@...> wrote:
>
>> If I've understood that correctly, then I'd suggest "Development" or
>> "Sandbox".
>
> Experimental?

No. We already have Snapshot for experimental.

Earnie Boyd
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On 2007-1-26 0:37 UTC, Earnie Boyd wrote:
> 
> We already have Snapshots.  The packages currently in Proposed are for 
> the most extent Unmaintained.

Okay, I agree: of eight "Proposed" packages, only one is dated
within the last twelve months, and half are from 2003.

On Friday 26 January 2007 01:05, Greg Chicares wrote:
> On 2007-1-26 0:37 UTC, Earnie Boyd wrote:
> > We already have Snapshots.  The packages currently in Proposed are for
> > the most extent Unmaintained.
>
> Okay, I agree: of eight "Proposed" packages, only one is dated
> within the last twelve months, and half are from 2003.

There does appear to be an overlap in purpose for Snapshot/Proposed/Candidate.

I've tended to view `Proposed' as somewhere to put contributed packages, somewhat related to MinGW, but not considered as officially supported by the MinGW Developers; perhaps `Contributed' would serve better, as a name.

Of the eight currently designated `Proposed', I doubt if Danny would consider his Dwarf2 GCC variant as unmaintained.  I certainly don't consider my own `execwrap' library as unmaintained; it's functionally complete, and stable, in terms of my design goals for it, so I'm not expending development effort on it, but if I get any bug reports or feature requests related to it, I'll address them.

On the remaining six, I don't wish to comment; perhaps the original contributers would care to do so, if they are reading this.  If not, and if we are unable to contact the original maintainers, then I'd say we can safely class them as unmaintained, but do we simply drop them, or do we move them to an `Unmaintained' package category?  (SF will keep them anyway, but if we don't keep them affiliated with some package, they will drop out of sight).

Regards,
Keith.

Quoting Keith Marshall <keithmarshall@...>:

> On Friday 26 January 2007 01:05, Greg Chicares wrote:
>> On 2007-1-26 0:37 UTC, Earnie Boyd wrote:
>> > We already have Snapshots.  The packages currently in Proposed are for
>> > the most extent Unmaintained.
>>
>> Okay, I agree: of eight "Proposed" packages, only one is dated
>> within the last twelve months, and half are from 2003.
>
> There does appear to be an overlap in purpose for 
> Snapshot/Proposed/Candidate.
>

I use Snapshots to put development releases for testing and Candidate 
for pre-release possible Current releases.

> I've tended to view `Proposed' as somewhere to put contributed 
> packages, somewhat related to MinGW, but not considered as officially 
> supported by the MinGW Developers; perhaps `Contributed' would serve 
> better, as a name.
>

I think that is what I intended when I first created it but also more 
as a ``marketing test'' area to determine use based on download.  I 
almost suggested Contributed but felt that possibly it might encourage 
more of the same which is fine I suppose but I would rather see more 
mingwPORT instead.

> Of the eight currently designated `Proposed', I doubt if Danny would 
> consider his Dwarf2 GCC variant as unmaintained.  I certainly don't 
> consider my own `execwrap' library as unmaintained; it's functionally 
> complete, and stable, in terms of my design goals for it, so I'm not 
> expending development effort on it, but if I get any bug reports or 
> feature requests related to it, I'll address them.
>

Ok, I agree this fits Contributed.

> On the remaining six, I don't wish to comment; perhaps the original 
> contributers would care to do so, if they are reading this.  If not, 
> and if we are unable to contact the original maintainers, then I'd 
> say we can safely class them as unmaintained, but do we simply drop 
> them, or do we move them to an `Unmaintained' package category?  (SF 
> will keep them anyway, but if we don't keep them affiliated with some 
> package, they will drop out of sight).
>

Of those six I contributed compress, mpatrol and pdcurses; I've never 
seen any complaints but I'm not going to support them any longer 
either.  The pascal one the developer is supporting elsewhere so 
keeping it may not be beneficial.  So perhaps renaming Proposed to 
Contributed and adding an Unsupported page makes sense?  Unmaintained 
could be misconstrued.

BTW, even though SF keeps the files forever, there is now no way to see 
the old files.  Currently http://downloads.sf.net/mingw will redirect 
to the FRS page.

Earnie

On 2007-1-27 18:30 UTC, Keith Marshall wrote:
> On Friday 26 January 2007 01:05, Greg Chicares wrote:
> 
>> On 2007-1-26 0:37 UTC, Earnie Boyd wrote:
> 
>> > We already have Snapshots. The packages currently in Proposed are for
>> > the most extent Unmaintained.
> 
>> Okay, I agree: of eight "Proposed" packages, only one is dated
>> within the last twelve months, and half are from 2003.

[snip discussion of two of the more recent packages]
> On the remaining six, I don't wish to comment; perhaps the original
> contributers would care to do so, if they are reading this.

As for mpatrol:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435&package_id=82725&release_id=172946

I guess I'm the contributor in a sense, and I'm willing to assume
responsibility for maintaining it somehow--but I wonder whether a
package is the right way to do that. It seems that this library has
to be custom-built for whatever combination of gcc and binutils is
installed, because it replaces the C and C++ memory-allocation
libraries and depends on libiberty and libbfd. There have been
conflicts between gcc and binutils with respect to those libraries:
  http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=4456861
which must be managed carefully for mpatrol to work.

The package has value as source, but presumably works for only one
2003 combination of gcc and binutils, and otherwise must be rebuilt:

  http://forums.codeblocks.org/index.php?topic=908.0;prev_next=prev
| OK, I finally figured out mpatrol.
...
| The precompiled version on the mingw site is "broken"
...
| grab the source at the mingw site which they already patched
| (better too since it generates dlls).

I'm continuing to develop my own procedures for navigating these
difficulties so that my coworkers can use mpatrol. We've mandated
its use for our regression tests, because it really does find some
nasty problems with little effort; so we're making sure it keeps
working with MinGW tools.

What's the best way to offer this work to the community, in light
of the dependency on both gcc and binutils versions?
 - a versioned package to accompany each MinGW-installer release?
 - autotoolize the hand-written makefiles we now use?
 - MinGWport?

Quoting Greg Chicares <chicares@...>:

> - MinGWport?
>

You can give a question in mingwPORT for which version to build to.  
Perhaps you could even test the default gcc and binutils for their 
versions to set a default value.

Earnie

Quoting Earnie Boyd <earnie@...>:

>
>> Of the eight currently designated `Proposed', I doubt if Danny would
>> consider his Dwarf2 GCC variant as unmaintained.  I certainly don't
>> consider my own `execwrap' library as unmaintained; it's functionally
>> complete, and stable, in terms of my design goals for it, so I'm not
>> expending development effort on it, but if I get any bug reports or
>> feature requests related to it, I'll address them.
>>
>
> Ok, I agree this fits Contributed.
>

I've just changed Proposed to Contributed.

Do we think we need an Unsupported?

Earnie Boyd
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