Alec Warner wrote:
> Effective-Date: Date the mask goes into effect.  This means you can
> mask stuff in the future.
> Expiration-Date: Date the mask ends.  This means you can have masks
> that expire after a given time.

While I do not see a problem with Effective-Date, I do not think 
Expiration-Date is too good of an idea as it would be quite easy for it 
to backfire and have a negative effect.

For example, someone might decide to remove a package from the tree and 
mask it with an expiration date, but forget to remove the package before 
the mask expires. Small, careless mistakes like these may lead to much 
larger problems.

If this is at all implemented, it must be made *clear* that this should 
only be used for certain scenarios where it can not become a problem, 
such as when masking a package with an expiration date of when the 
package is scheduled to hit the official mirrors. Even then, it can 
become somewhat of a problem if there is a gap between when the packages 
should hit the mirrors and when they actually do, as it would result in 
404 errors.

While automation of this may lead to things being *slightly* simpler and 
quicker, it may also lead to problems in the future. It would be much 
more fool-proof to manually remove masks than to have a feature such as 
this.

-- 
David Shakaryan
-- 
gentoo-project@g.o mailing list