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On Dienstag 16 Juni 2009, Frank Peters wrote: |
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> In a lot of cases, for example perl, Xorg, and gcc, the Gentoo |
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> distribution lags far behind the latest available releases. |
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really? |
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> Even allowing the "~amd64" unstable series, this remains true. |
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> Why is this so? |
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lacking manpower. |
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Really, nothing else. Somebody had to write the ebuilds. Somebody has to test |
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the stuff. |
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You want more actual packages? Great, go to www.gentoo.org and look for the |
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documentation about 'arch testers' and 'becoming a dev'. |
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> |
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> I had first considered moving to Gentoo in the fall of 2008, |
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> but after noticing that the only version of gcc available at |
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> that time was gcc-3.x, |
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so very wrong. |
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> I postponed the change. In the spring |
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> of 2009, Gentoo finally moved up to gcc-4.3.x and then I made |
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> the transition. But the update to the 4.3 series was a long time |
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> in coming. |
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because it takes a long time to check a new gcc against all the ten thousands |
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of packages in the tree. |
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> |
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> The latest perl, released some time ago, is version 5.10 but |
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> Gentoo includes only 5.8.8. |
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and you are missing what? |
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> |
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> The latest Xorg has restructured certain libxcb dependencies, |
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> which has caused a lot of problems for a lot of packages, |
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> and Gentoo is behind these changes as well. |
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really? |
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> |
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> (Ironically, it was this libxcb issue as well as the whole Xorg |
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> modularity mess that first motivated me to seek out Gentoo.) |
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no, it is caused by the fact there is a lot of badly written software out |
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there. Ironically I am using X with xcb for a long time and haven't had |
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problems so far. Even java - once problematic (unless you set a variable) |
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seems to be fixed. |
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> |
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> Now I am not actually voicing a complaint. Gentoo, IMO, is still |
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> the best distribution for Linux. I am just wondering why there |
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> is such a great lag before a package version is deemed stable -- or |
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> even unstable. In my experience with maintaining my own Linux system, |
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> I never had any great issues with always installing the latest "bleeding" |
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> edge software. |
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fine. But gentoo is a bit bigger than your system. |
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I answered it above. The problem is manpower. There are way too many packages |
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for way too few devs. Testing the crap takes its time - but sadly there is a |
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lack of arch testers too (one requirement - a pure stable system, is one |
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reason holding me back). |
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But despair not. You want latest X? Install the X11 overlay. It is there to |
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test the very latest stuff. You want latest gcc? gcc-porting is for you (gcc |
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4.4 is just sweet...). Perl? perl-experimental. |
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Today a lot of stuff is tested in overlays first, before becoming part of the |
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portage tree. This could be faster - but again, manpower is the magic word. |
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(also one reason why I dislike overlays: it makes portage tree looking stale |
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and gentoo looking dead, while the overlays are very alive). |
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