Re: [gentoo-dev] Some ideas on how to reduce territoriality

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Fri, 2007-08-03 at 21:13 -0400, Luis Francisco Araujo wrote:
> > - arch-specific patches/dependencies - If someone is requesting KEYWORD
> > changes on a package and it requires a patch or additional dependencies
> > for your architecture, you are not only permitted, but really are
> > required to make the necessary changes to add support for your
> > architecture.
>
> I am not sure about this last one ... what if for example this patch is
> only for supporting a special option of the package for that
> architecture, but the maintainer of the package found out that such a
> patch is unnecessary and/or will cause other kind of problems in the
> package, therefore preferring avoiding such a patch ... or he just
> wouldn't like to apply the patch for X or Y; or even further, he just
> wouldn't like to have such a package available for that architecture
> just yet for Z or W.

The vagueness made it kinda hard to follow, but if a maintainer doesn't
want their package on an architecture, they need to mark it -arch for
that architecture.  As it is right now, any arch team can add ~arch
without maintainer consent.

> The stabilization idea sounds good and it could free maintainers from
> filing similar bugs over and over ; but wouldn't this be more and harder
> work for arch teams?. For example, they should carefully track the
> history of all the packages to know when and if they should stabilize it
> yet.

Huh?

It's simple.  The maintainer says "stabilize foo-1.2-r1" which gives a
minimum level that all arches should be using.  If foo-1.2-r2 comes out,
it is up to the arch team to decide if/when to stabilize it, *unless*
the maintainer requests a newer version/revision.  Basically, the
maintainer sets the minimum level they would like stable.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation