Re: [gentoo-dev] Adding slot and subslot deps to others' packages

[Alexandre Rostovtsev]

On Tue, 2014-03-04 at 15:54 +0400, Sergey Popov wrote:
> 02.03.2014 19:52, Michał Górny пишет:
> > Dnia 2014-03-02, o godz. 16:45:03
> > Jeroen Roovers <jer@g.o> napisał(a):
> >
> >> On Sun, 2 Mar 2014 09:37:22 +0100
> >> Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Few months ago I have written a small FAQ on how to use slots
> >>> and subslots for library dependencies properly [1]. However, today
> >>> I see that most of the developers didn't care to properly update their
> >>> packages and when I introduced binary compatibility slot in libgcrypt,
> >>> I had my hands full of work fixing the mess for a single package.
> >>
> >> How about you file a tracker bug report for each library package, and
> >> then file bug reports per package using that dependency blocking the
> >> tracker bug?
> >
> > Excuse me but are you serious? I'm supposed to report a faftillion
> > of bugs? Filing them will take more time than fixing the packages, not
> > to mention all the time wasted on handling responses and all other
> > noise. But it seems that Gentoo developers lately prefer noise over
> > real work.
> >
>
> Excuse me, will you get the full burden of possible breakages of all of
> the touched packages and will you not saying 'i updated the package and
> broke it, maintainers, please fix!'. No, sir, that would not work.
>
> I agreed with Jeroen - file a bug or ping people in IRC.

When you rename or slotmove a package, or when you add slots to
something that was previously unslotted, it's your job to look through
the tree and edit the dependencies of anything that pulls in your
package to use the correct slot and name. You don't ask the maintainers
for permission because keeping the tree consistent is more important
than territorial fights. And of course, you have to be very careful when
doing it - if you mess up and break someone's ebuild they will yell at
you, users will yell at you, and you will need to quickly fix the
problem!

What Michał wanted to do is exactly the same process, only because it
was going to be on a large scale (hundreds of ebuilds affected) he
decided to ping gentoo-dev first.