How to prevent old packages from being deleted if the new port fails to build?

[asomers]

With ATOMIC_PACKAGES_REPOSITORY=yes and COMMIT_PACKAGES_ON_FAILURE=yes, then if a particular port gets broken by an update, poudriere bulk will delete the old package even though it failed to build a new one. OTOH, with COMMIT_PACKAGES_ON_FAILURES=no, then a single broken port will prevent poudriere bulk from publishing any packages, even ones build successfully.

Is there any way to ensure that poudriere bulk will publish all successfully-built packages, but not delete packages that failed to build? I can't find a way.

[bdrewery]

There is KEEP_OLD_PACKAGES that might help. We could change the build to not delete the package until the build succeeds. However its dependencies may have been upgraded and the package, that fails to build and we keep, no longer would work.

[asomers]

I saw KEEP_OLD_PACKAGES. But from the description, it sounds like the old packages won't be available automatically. The operator would have to change the entire repository to get the old packages back, and it wouldn't be possible to mix old packages with new ones.

its dependencies may have been upgraded and the package, that fails to build and we keep, no longer would work.

Does that mean that what I'm asking for is just fundamentally a bad idea, and I should abandon it?