Re: [gentoo-dev] Suggestion related with dropping keywords policy

[Jeroen Roovers]

On Fri, 11 Jun 2010 07:39:01 -0400
Joseph Jezak <josejx@g.o> wrote:

> Your preferred method is exactly how (as a ppc keyworder) I like to
> see these kind of bugs handled. Dropping keywords makes an awful lot
> more work for us and hurts our users, especially since we're not
> always very prompt at handling bugs.

Well, reasoning for the HPPA team, which maintains an architecture
that is dying rather more quickly than PPC32 (which still has all kinds
of embedded uses and so on),, in favour of IA64, I'd rather see dropped
keywords than new profile entries, possibly with the keyworded ebuilds
being gradually removed after an OK. That way I can make a choice to
keep a package (set) for a bit or to stop supporting it immediately.

Since there is no "unveiling" effect in re-adding dropped keywords, as
opposed to using profile masks that you can only remove safely by
first revdep-checking the entire tree again, I'd rather have people
file bug reports than touching the HPPA profile files themselves.

Since we (HPPA) basically agreed to drop support for the major desktop
environments in due time already (we still need to make that official
some time soon and then actually work on the problem for the last time),
dropping those keywords is a lot better than masking specific versions
of ebuilds or specific uses of USE flags.

Funnily enough, I've expressed these wishes to the people who are doing
the *DEPEND checks before they commit (hundreds of ebuilds) time and
again, and still ended up with sometimes years old entries in
package.{,use.}mask files.

In fact I think there's a bug open about it and I tried to get some
discussion about it going on this very mailing list. :)


     jer