Re: [gentoo-releng] Re: Free-standing Portage / Recent stage3 tarballs / Beta

[Alex Howells]

> > .. which may not be received too well. There is a perception that
> > Developers *support* ~arch, which is a skewed outlook; it's there for
> > testing, it is *not* meant to be used by 99.5% of end users.  It is a
> > means to an end, a way to track packages which *may* be stable, a QA
> > process.
> >
> > ie:  The following would/should be entirely acceptable:
> >
> > <User>  I'm running ~arch of libfoo and it's breaking appwoo, help!
> >         Need this to work, really *REALLY* badly!
> >
> > <Dev>   We're aware of those issues, but libfoo works fine for most
> >         of the other apps which require it.  No ETA on the fix,
> >         tough sh*t for running ~arch on a critical box.
> >
> > <User>  Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!
> >
> > If you're interested in helping that QA process, most of the
> > architecture teams now have an 'Arch Tester' (AT) setup you could help
> > out with...
>
> Well ... I've been running ~x86 and ~amd64 for a long time and I can't
> remember an instance where I needed to drop back to stable for the
> things I regularly use, such as R, maxima, Ruby, Lyx, and I can't
> remember a time when I needed to drop back to stable for a core
> component like the kernel, gcc, perl, or python either. But -- that's
> x86 and amd64 -- it might be much riskier on something less common, like
> powerpc.

I wasn't attempting to state "This does not work!"; merely expressing
that ~arch isn't really a supported platform. Dropping back to stable
isn't really a viable route, once your system is ~arch there's quite a
lot to go <BOOM!> if you tried to globally undo that.  Wanna try it?
;)

At the moment Gentoo Linux has a reputation as a "ricer" distribution,
and a large proportion of users on ~arch does nothing to solve that...
Speaking entirely frankly I'd love to see increased adoption in
enterprise, there's a whole lot this distribution has to offer to
server farms, for example.

Look at it this way:  by running ~arch whilst *not* a Developer or
Arch Tester you're having a very limited impact, or possibly a
negative one. Getting onto the 'track' of contributing to the project
through the various 'Arch Tester' teams is a great way for a "Power
User" to help out; should you feel you're more technically inclined,
can write a useful language or three / hack ebuilds as naturally as
breathing, I know we need Developers!  Especially in understaffed
areas like Release Engineering. :)

I'd have liked to see two main things happen with Gentoo 2008.0:

   *  Get rid of stage3 - all our install documentation works with
      just the stage3 right now, we don't "support" stage1/2
      installs yet users are /always/ asking on IRC and MLs
      for help with a stage1 install because they think it's l33t.
      Remove it from mirrors, put it in /experimental, whatever;
      we need the stage1/2 somewhere for lotsa reasons, but lets
      make it less obvious to weed out those clueless ricers.

  (the next one is more of a Portage change)
   *  Have some warning banners on ~arch and a toggle option for
      make.conf to disable them.  There are *far* too many people
      on IRC suggesting newbies adopt ~arch, and they do so.. :(
      They've got no clue what it means, then they bitch/whine
      when they hit ABI issues or other problems and blame Gentoo.
      Don't document the toggle option in the Install Manual ;)

   Suggested value for disabling the big flashy warning banners :P
   MODIFYING_ACCEPT_KEYWORDS_MAY_BREAK_MY_BOX_AND_I_UNDERSTAND_THIS
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