Christian Faulhammer posted on Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:33:12 +0100 as
excerpted:

> William Hubbs <williamh@g.o>:
>> > * Masking live...
>> > Heck no. This is not proper usage. Just use keywords mask.
>> > KEYWORDS="". Problem solved and the package.mask is smaller. (Note,
>> > in overlays do what ever you want, since it does not polute the main
>> > mask from g-x86).
>>  
>>  True.  If we mask live ebuilds with KEYWORDS="", there isn't a reason
>>  to put them in p.mask that I can think of.
> 
>  Many users use "**" in their p.keywords file and get a live ebuild
> then.

There's two different ways of seeing that.

1) Users using ** in their package.keywords file should know enough about 
what they're doing to use their own package.mask, as well.  If they're 
using ** in the keywords file, they're /saying/ they're reading to handle 
such things, after all, why shouldn't we let them?

2) That won't necessarily stop the bugs from rolling in.  Some devs may 
get tired of live pkg bugs and package.mask it, thus putting up a double-
barrier to the live ebuild.  If users jump BOTH barriers and fall over 
the ledge, well... maybe they /need/ that Darwin Award! =:^]

Thus I can see either way.  If a dev's sick of dealing with live package 
bugs, maybe a package.mask will keep a few more folks from jumping over 
that ledge and filing them.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman