[64769] trunk/dports/devel/alex/

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Mar 16, 2010, at 13:55, nox wrote:

> Le 16 mars 2010 à 06:49, Ryan Schmidt a écrit :
> 
>> The problem here and with the other port(s?) you renamed is that users who had the old port "alex" installed will never know you renamed it to "hs-alex" and will never get future updates you make to hs-alex. To fix this, keep the port "alex" around and make it a stub port. Make it display an error when users try to install it, and mark it as having been "replaced_by hs-alex" (or "replace_by hs-platform-alex"; I don't quite understand the distinction between these ports). See the port osxvnc for an example of how to do this. The old replaced_by ports should continue to exist until all users can be expected to have upgraded; I recommend this period of time be about one year, since I personally know two users who do not upgrade very often so there are undoubtedly others as well.
>> 
> 
> I don't think that's a good idea, especially when a lot of ports are renamed.

It is a very good idea, any time a port is renamed. Now that we have the ability to seamlessly rename ports using the replaced_by feature, why shouldn't we make use of it?

> We should have a newsletter or something like that for this kind of announcement.

I assure you people who only tangentially care about MacPorts will not read a newsletter. I'm talking about the types of user who are not subscribed to any mailing list and not involved with our community at all.

> Furthermore, I don't think any clueless user which might overlook the renaming is using Haskell.

Who knows. Often times, a port is installed not because the user wants it, but because a different port the user wants needs it as a dependency. The user doesn't want to know anything about those dependencies, only about the port she ultimately wants to use. Maybe the Haskell ports aren't in that position today, but maybe they will be in the future. It's still no reason not to provide our users with the best possible experience.


Greg, please add "replaced_by hs-platform-alex" to the new stub alex port, and similarly for the other ports you replaced. This will allow a user to type e.g. "sudo port upgrade alex" and have hs-platform-alex installed and alex removed, all automatically.