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On 21/08/2013 03:54, Doug Goldstein wrote: |
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> Its also precisely that mix and match that might cause instability due |
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> to people not testing things. Case in point QEMU 1.6.0 just came out and |
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> it went through a number of release candidates but no one ever saw that |
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> it depends only on Python 2.4 but actually needs Python 2.6. That's kind |
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> of like Gentoo, a package says it depends on libfoo 1.0 or higher and |
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> the dev that tested stable baz 0.8 confirmed it worked with libfoo 1.0, |
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> but baz 0.9 in ~arch still depends on libfoo 1.0 but really needs libfoo |
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> 1.1 and libfoo 1.1 is ~arch as well. So the developer running ~arch |
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> believed that baz 0.9 works fine since he has ~arch libfoo. |
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> |
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> My point is what Gentoo calls "stable" is just something that usually 2 |
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> or more people have compiled and installed vs ~arch which 1 or more |
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> people have compiled and installed. |
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> |
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+1 |
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I think comparisons with the RHELs of this world to find what stable |
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means are invalid. Gentoo does not play in RHELs space, and anyone who |
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tries to deploy Gentoo where RHEL is a good fit is somewhat of a fool |
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[Aside: I'm a huge Gentoo fan, all my personal machines are Gentoo or |
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FreeBSD and yet I have banned Gentoo outright at work: juniors cause me |
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too much headaches, and Centos fixed all of that] |
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|
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Gentoo simply cannot offer the same guarantees about stable that RHEL |
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can, mostly for reasons of manpower. The best we can do is to state that |
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we are confident stuff works pretty much mostly OK and doesn't break for |
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everyone, so the user can now do their own tests and decide. |
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Let's also keep in mind that Gentoo is a meta-distribution - it lets you |
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build your own distro. So all the heavy QA lifting that RHEL does for |
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you, you now have to do yourself (that role bumps one run down the |
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ladder). The classic meaning of "stable" just doesn't quite fit in that |
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scenario. |
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|
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And, a truly stable mission-critical system is one that has all the |
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required features and emerge is never run again except for bug and |
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security fixes. A rolling release will never be truly "stable" |
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What I'm saying is let's not set the bar for stable too high. Our |
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targeted userbase is somewhat unique in the world. |
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-- |
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Alan McKinnon |
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alan.mckinnon@×××××.com |