Re: [PATCH 00/13] Update versions of libcurl and Perl

From: Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>
Date: Oct 11, 2024, 19:22 UTC
Message-ID: <CAPig+cRo3ptvgxctL-pjupzHsPeXCb3KfaBTwdzawGNezML6VA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqttdicws8.fsf@gitster.g>

On Fri, Oct 11, 2024 at 2:35 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

> Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com> writes:
> > I may be in the minority here, but I'm fairly negative on this entire
> > patch series. As you say, supporting these old versions is effectively
> > zero-cost, so how does this project benefit from these changes which
> > potentially "break" Git for users on older platforms? I see no upside
> > here. The cover letter provides no strong justification for
> > (potentially) inconveniencing people; the argument about being able to
> > utilize more modern Perl features is weak[1] at best and is not
> > convincing.
>
> Having said all that, I did find it was surprising that we raised to
> a merely 6-year old cutoff point.  If it were discarding versions of
> libraries that are older than 12 years (instead of 6 years), would
> you be having the same reaction?

I almost certainly would have had the same reaction had it been 12 years instead of 6. As one who "lives" with these old platforms both professionally and personally, I'm sensitive to the issue because I have been burned too many times by projects arbitrarily dropping support for older platforms (or, more generally, not taking their user population into consideration when making arbitrary changes).

I would be much more tolerant and understanding of changes with substantial and provable value, such as ridding the project of a high-cost maintenance burden, or eliminating some maldesign which impedes implementation of some new important feature (or even which impedes fixing some serious flaw). But the patch series under discussion does not fall into those categories; it (potentially) penalizes an arbitrary chunk of the Git user base without any obvious benefit to the project itself.