[aur-general] Package removal/orphan request (stackless-python, clojure-svn, firestarter)

Sven-Hendrik Haase sh at lutzhaase.com
Fri Mar 6 13:09:31 EST 2009


Aaron Griffin wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 11:29 AM, Grigorios Bouzakis <grbzks at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 6:00 PM, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 9:47 AM, Grigorios Bouzakis <grbzks at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>       
>>>> On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 5:37 PM, Sven-Hendrik Haase <sh at lutzhaase.com> wrote:
>>>>         
>>>>> Also, please remove/ban the firestarter in extra, it is a very old, now
>>>>> broken piece of software which hasn't seen any love for quite a long
>>>>> time. In it's current state, it endangers users more than it helps keep
>>>>> them secure, therefore I request a removal and ban if possible until the
>>>>> firestarter project eventually releases a new version.
>>>>>           
>>>> +1
>>>>         
>>> Huh? It's the same version as the official release. What's wrong with it?
>>>
>>>       
>> Its unmaintained for more than 4 years. Last release 29 Jan 2005.
>> The ChangeLog hasnt been touched for 7+ years.
>> Pesonally I dont have a problem with it if it still works.
>> But since someone brought it up..
>>     
>
> Ah, so Sven, is the package actually broken? Or is it still usable for
> some people?
>
>   
The application is extremely unstable for me. Even on different
distributions, it tends to segfault all the time which makes it utterly
unusable. I talked to two people who share these experiences so I think
it is safe to assume that Firestarter simply is too old to be used in
conjunction with any modern distro. I can only guess that it would still
work on Ubuntu 6.06 but for Arch Linux, I think there is hardly any chance.
As was already pointed out by Grigorios, the project seems dead beyond
hope for maintenance patches that address these issues and since it is
still sometimes suggested as a firewall application, I think it should
be removed and remain removed from the repositories to avoid confusion
and frustration and maybe even possible security issues.


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