Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: don't rely on dynamic deps

[Tom Wijsman]

On Sat, 26 Jul 2014 14:25:23 +0000 (UTC)
Martin Vaeth <martin@×××××.de> wrote:

> Tom Wijsman <TomWij@g.o> wrote:
> > Michael Palimaka <kensington@g.o> wrote:
> >
> >> What a great way to kill the distro.
> >>
> >> I can already heat my house with the number of unnecessary rebuilds
> >
> > Do you upgrade @world every hour and thus have it cause excessive
> > heat?
> >
> > If I upgrade every X weeks they become much more cool and
> > necessary...
>
> One of the main advantages of gentoo is the flowing upgrade,
> especially since this can only be very poorly emulated by
> a binary distro.
>
> If you really suggest that the user waits one month and
> then recompiles the whole installation, you give up
> this advantage of gentoo: The user is not up-to-date
> for a long time, and moreover, then needs practically
> a full reinstall; both are things which he wants to avoid
> and why perhaps he has chosen gentoo in the first place.
>
> At least, for me it is the case: if I have to reinstall
> all packages every months - and even have delay in security
> updates for a month - I will certainly switch the
> distribution. I guess many others think similarly.

Simple equation: The more frequent the user updates, the more frequent
the user will experience the minor inconveniences by upstream and
distribution maintainers. Otherwise we'd be using a 9999-only system.

Dynamic deps, as well as rev bumps, alter this equation; the problem
with that is that such alterations don't come free and without flaws,
which is essentially where you get to reconsider how you alter it.

In a similar way the user has to reconsider whether updating less is
acceptable compared to compiling an occasional inconvenience. Choosing
between a stable and non-stable tree is a big gap of difference in
convenience, choosing how often you update is fine tuning.

To get the idea: "Upstream released W.X.Y.Z+1; it was only yesterday
I've compiled W.X.Y.Z, turns out the difference is not so important."
Agreed that this can very well be an important security update; but
if you go back to the equation, that still is a minor inconvenience.

PS: Not suggesting 1 month; but rather that updating not enough, or too
much, can make one experience serious effects that such choices imply.

-- 
With kind regards,

Tom Wijsman (TomWij)
Gentoo Developer

E-mail address  : TomWij@g.o
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