[oi-dev] Can I still install older perl and python?

[Alexander Pyhalov]

On 05/12/17 05:23 PM, Gordon Ross wrote:
> Well, the point really is this.  I can (still), outside of IPS
> go grab the Python 2.6 packages from the repo server
> and install them and they work [1].  Why should the
> packaging system go out of it's way to prevent that?
> Instead, IPS says "you _must_ remove this"
> (because the package was marked obsolete).
>
> The policy is:  This is obsolete so you can't install it.
> A more helpful policy might look like:
> We're going to remove this for you, but if you like
> you can still go install it by it's explicit version...
> (or something like that).

The policy is exactly this. You can pkg freeze some versions.
In theory you can even install package pointing at exact version before
it was marked Obsolete. I say "in theory", because on practice
all old software versions are periodically cleaned up from /hipster
repository to keep its size sane (otherwise IPS starts consuming too 
much resources).
-- 
Best regards,
Alexander Pyhalov,
system administrator of Southern Federal University IT department