[gentoo-amd64] Re: kdelibs insanity

[Duncan]

"Mark Haney" <mhaney@××××××××××××.org> posted
4A72E4DC.2070106@××××××××××××.org, excerpted below, on  Fri, 31 Jul 2009
08:34:36 -0400:


> Here's my take on this, since I am OP.  For the last year or two, I've
> had, more and more, to go straight to ~arch for 'stable' packages.  This
>  isn't so much about KDE4, which I /expected/ to be funky when it was
> released, it's virtually everything else.  Unlike some people, or most,
> if I read the list right, are already running ~amd64 on their systems.
>
> I am not.
>
> And I do not want to.  What's the point in having 'stable' when
> virtually no packages are marked as such any more?  I've been running
> qt4.5 for nearly a year now.  Isn't it about bloody time it gets marked
> stable?  Hell, IIRC, KDE3.5.10 isn't even marked stable (or wasn't last
> time I looked).

Note that while Gentoo does provide the tools to mix stable and ~arch for 
those who wish to try, it's not well tested or supported.  All stable is 
supposed to be well tested, and all ~arch should be tested working at 
least on the Gentoo package maintainer's machines with all ~arch, but 
mixing the two is asking for trouble.

Meanwhile, one of the issues with stable (which people like me parse as 
stale with a "b" added... hmm... I like that description, I think I'll 
keep using it! =:^) is that it takes people to test it that are willing 
to stay as far back as stale is in general, so they're testing a stale 
install not an ~arch install, but who are also willing to test candidates 
for stale, ensure they work, and report them as working.

You say you have a big package.keywords file right now.  But have you 
been reporting as working packages as you install them, so that the 
Gentoo/amd64 folks know they are working?  (Maybe you are, I don't know, 
and I'm not saying you have to, but somebody has to, and those like me 
that want ~arch systems aren't going to be able to test with stale, and 
those who never install ~arch packages at all aren't going to be testing 
since they stick to stale, so the only ones left to test and report 
working are those who are mostly stale but do install the occasional not-
yet-stale package.

> I make the comment about it being right for me because I have been
> getting the feeling Gentoo is becoming 'Debian v2.0' by just leaving
> everything useful in ~arch (or testing in Debian's case).

I've never run Debian, and prefer not to run stale anyway, so can't 
honestly say, there.  But what I can say is that in all honesty, at least 
for me, if Gentoo/amd64 dropped stable all together (as is the case with 
a couple of the obscure archs, labeled 'experimental') it would only be 
beneficial to me, as that would be more testing and developer power for 
the ~arch I'm actually running.

But I'm not selfish enough to wish that on the folks running stable.  I'm 
just not interested in something that stale, is all, so it doesn't matter 
to me one way or the other.

> If it is STABLE, mark it as such.  Don't sit here and tell me, 'Oh just
> run ~amd64 widget, it's stable'.

They DO mark it as such, when they KNOW it's stale.  But they don't KNOW 
it's stale, unless it has been reasonably tested on an otherwise stale 
system, and the people willing to do that testing and actually report the 
results aren't so easy to come by, so it's taking longer to know it's 
stale.

> When I started with Gentoo in 2005/6, I could emerge -uD world and know
> it'll pull in the latest stable packages and be done with it.  Now, I
> have to watch because some packages aren't, some might need a downgrade
> of a package, which I have to mask so it doesn't get downgraded, ad
> infinitum.

Well, as I said, mixed stale and unstale isn't well tested or supported.  
But if it's marked stale and is removed, forcing a downgrade, there's a 
reason for it.  OTOH if you package.keyworded as specific version, and it 
goes away, then yes, portage will suggest a downgrade.  But that could 
only happen because it wasn't considered stale in the first place, and as 
an ~arch package with newer ones available, it can be removed.

> To me, the distro is just feeling kinda sloppy on the back end.  No, I'm
> not looking for a 'Ubuntu' experience.  That distro gives me heartburn.
>  But, geez, I do expect packages to be moved from testing to stable
> slightly more often than never.  I'm not trying to be overly critical
> here, but the way things are going, it's getting /harder/ to maintain a
> STABLE system now than it used to be.

It may indeed be getting harder to maintain a stale system.  I wouldn't 
know.  But what I can say is what I said above, the only way the packages 
are going to move to stale is if people on stale test them and say they 
work on stale.

> And, FWIW, on topic, having qt3support globally makes no difference. I
> still have a thousand bleeding hoops to jump through to fix all the
> asinine blocks and dependencies.

It's really not that bad.  As revealed in a different post, you had parts 
of and old qt4 blocking the newer version.  As I said, trying to do 
multiple versions of the qt4 components doesn't work.  It has to be all 
one version.  Again as I said, once it's all one version, if you do 
--update --deep, the system should pretty much take care of its own 
updates.  But it can't do that safely with split versions, and it'll have 
difficulty doing it if you don't run your updates with --deep, as well.

So you're breaking at least one and possibly two rules (in addition to 
running an unsupported partially ~arch and partially stale arch system), 
trying to have multiple qt4 versions, and possibly, trying to update 
without using --deep, thus only making more trouble for yourself.

If it's that far behind, why not run ~arch?  A number of users have 
reported that full ~arch has actually been more stable for them than 
partially stale, partially ~arch.  Either you want stale or you don't, 
and it doesn't appear you're satisfied with it, so...

-- 
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