Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuilds for kde3 beta etc.

[Mikael Hallendal]

tis 2001-12-25 klockan 16.49 skrev Daniel Robbins:
> On Tue, Dec 25, 2001 at 01:10:02PM +0100, Mikael Hallendal wrote:
> > Well, it's very much unsolved. Because users don't care about masking
> > once they've learned how to get around it. As I said before _beta,
> > masking will only hold back some and tell that it's unstable. But we'll
> > end up supporting the stuff anyway.
>
> This is easily solved.  Just put a very clear comment in package.mask around
> the mask entries stating in no unclear terms that *these packages are not yet
> supported*, are *for developers only*, and *are very unstable*.  *use at your
> own risk*, *not a good idea* and *you'll regret it later* should do the trick!
> :)
>
> > This is just as the /incoming directory which many users started to use
> > even though they shouldn't.
>
> How so?

The ebuilds in /incoming are untested and should not be used by users.
But since it's available to users, users use it anyway.

I think it all comes down to what kind of distribution we want to
create. If we want to make a distribution for those that create it and
use-at-own-risk for everyone else (this is all fine by me) we should
clearly state this (to users and developers).

If we want to create a distributions for everyone we have to go around
to make users don't hurt themeselfs. Since users _will_ do bad things to
there own systems if they are able to. And if so, masking and comments
are not enough, imho. 

CVS branches solves these problems (and we have to start using branches
sooner or later anyway, preferable when we release 1.0). 

Regards,
  Mikael Hallendal

-- 

Mikael Hallendal
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team Leader
CodeFactory AB, Stockholm, Sweden