Re: Stop making unneeded improvements

[Marcus D. Leech]

On 01/05/2021 09:24 AM, Johannes Demel wrote:
> Hi Glen,
>
> I fully understand your frustration to make things work long term and 
> constant breakage.
>
> There are, however, reasons why breaking changes are unavoidable. Some 
> examples are:
> 1. GRC used Cheetah with XML for block definitions BUT:
> Cheetah got unmaintained for years. Cheetah is only available for 
> Python2. Python2 support ran out. Instead of relying on an 
> unmaintained project, GRC switched to Mako which uses YAML instead.
This is a pretty-generic problem with ANY package that has dependencies 
on other package--which in the open-source world basically amounts
  to "all of them".  If something you depend on is no longer 
maintained, then there's a good chance that in the future, it simply 
will stop working
  on some future release of an OS.  So, it's probably better to make 
the decision earlier rather than later to abandon an unsupported ship.
  This has consequences of variable unpleasantness, but it is prudent 
regardless.
> I know that a lot of package maintainers do a fantastic job to make GR 
> available for their respective systems. I hope that helps to get the 
> installation process going.
> I'd like to refer to Geof Nieboers recent email where he explains all 
> the difficulties that come up with old software.
In general the process of updating applications from 3.7 to post-3.7 is 
less intrusive than the famous 3.6 to 3.7 transition.  Nowhere near
  as painful, but still painful.