[gentoo-dev] package.mask and unmasking packages

[Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò]

I know I'm one of the new ones, and I shouldn't be complaining for this, but 
people please, pretty please, check what you remove out of p.mask.. if it was 
masked, there was probably a reason, check carefully before unmasking.
Remember that when you get something out of p.mask, all users in ~arch are 
going to get it at the same time, it means that if something breaks, we have 
a broken ~arch tree at least, and while that's not the "stable tree", it's 
not good to have it broken this way.

Rather, stick with something in p.mask for long times, and points people to 
unmask it to test it if bugs are fixed there, but _don't_ unmask it "and see 
what it happens".
Better wait a week or two more, but get everything working, than having to 
deal with broken trees and people who complains. You might not care what 
users think and say, but many people (and I'm one of them) actually has to 
deal with users and gets annoyed by people asking "gee why this was done? it 
does not work!" and similar. And the upgrade/downgrade, especially for things 
that are linked in lots of programs, it's pretty annoying for devs, too.

Just a friendly reminder, hoping that we won't see bigger problems.

-- 
Diego "Flameeyes" Pettenò - http://dev.gentoo.org/~flameeyes/
Gentoo/ALT lead, Gentoo/FreeBSD, Video, AMD64, Sound, PAM, KDE