unison and protocol breakage

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Feb 17, 2008, at 19:28, Vincent Lefevre wrote:

> On 2008-02-17 09:15:47 -0500, Kevin Ballard wrote:
>
>> Right now we're providing the official, released, stable version.  
>> That's
>> what we should provide.
>
> I agree that it should be provided. What I was requesting is that
> 2.13 be provided as well (but 2.27 would still be the default). And
> I don't think one can blame Debian or administrators of machines
> that have 2.13 only, in particular because 2.27 was released as
> stable on January 21:
>
>   http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/unison-announce/message/51
>
> i.e. less than a month ago. If you still think that 2.13 is outdated
> and must not be provided for this reason, then I propose to remove
> any software that is more than one-month old.

Vincent, I'm sure you were proposing that to illustrate how ludicrous  
it would be. I'm sure we currently have many many ports that install  
software that's outdated by more than a month.

On Feb 17, 2008, at 07:36, Kevin Ballard wrote:

> No, the solution here is to not do anything. Anybody using 2.13 needs
> to upgrade if they want to work with 2.27. We are not in the business
> of providing old port versions, and we *should not* be.

Kevin, I think we are in fact in the business of providing old port  
versions too. Where the newer version of the software is incompatible  
in some way with the older version of the software, it's reasonable  
to have two portfiles, if there is still demand for the older  
version. We already have this for several software packages. Consider  
php5 and php4; apache2, apache20 and apache; apr and apr0; mysql5,  
mysql4 and mysql3; postgresql83, postgresql82, postgresql81,  
postgresql80 and postgresql7; db46, db45, db44, db43, db42, db41 and  
db3.