Re: [gentoo-dev] Why adding python3_8 to Gentoo sucks?

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Nov 15, 2019 at 3:05 AM Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2019-11-13 at 22:16 +0100, Michał Górny wrote:
> > I'd like to share my frustration at the state of Python in general,
> > and Python packages in Gentoo.  So I'd like to 'bootstrap' python3_8 --
> > that is, add it to the most common dependency, dev-python/setuptools.
> > Simple thing, right?
> >
>
> So I went with plan B instead: I'll do as much testing locally
> as possible, and add py3.8 when I manage to get the tests on the package
> in question working, independently of the testing of all deep test deps.
> This will mean that some packages will have tests disabled temporarily
> for end users.
>

Perhaps an overlay would be simpler just so that you can generally
avoid worrying about QA until you're tidying up, but otherwise this
seems like it could be done in-tree by just masking the use flag so
that only those willing to test/contribute run into issues.

You've described a number of issues and my sense is that many are just
inherent to python itself (the complex dep graph/etc - unless we want
a monolithic package).  Some of course go to Gentoo practices, some of
which cause pain outside of python.

In particular it seems like many still don't understand when
revbumping is necessary.  I'd have to dig up the wording of the actual
decision but as I recall when the Council made the decision they
wanted to leave a bit of room for maintainer discretion, trusting that
maintainers would use it properly.  An alternative proposal was to
just make a strict rule that would have erred on the side of QA, at
the cost of extra rebuilds for users (but at least consistent ones
that didn't break package managers).  Obviously developers can't
exercise proper discretion if they don't fully understand the impacts.
If in doubt a revbump should always be safe, just at the cost of some
rebuilds (which are probably cheap for python packages).

-- 
Rich