Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for May

[Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi.

José Luis Rivero (yoswink) wrote:
> Roy Marples wrote:
>>
>> I maintain and play a game called Eternal Lands. I'm a Council member,
>> but not part of the games team/herd.
>>
>> One of the problems games have with stable/unstable/testing/whatever
>> keywords is that upstream changes things that in any other application
>> just would not change. For example, the network protocol when talking
>> to servers. EL is very version specific and when a new client is
>> launched, around once every 6 months they change over right away. That
>> means our users need the game right away.
>
> Thanks for the example, trust me if I tell you that we can understand
> the situation pretty well.
>
>>
>> I used to commit EL straight to stable for this very reason, but now
>> after a few Gentoo QA people bitched EL will never ever have a stable
>> keyword.
>
> I'm nearly sure that you always (at least) compile and run the new
> version in your box before you sent it to stable, didn't you? So, at
> least, you are able to say that it works in your case.
>
>> So instead I periodically have to let our users know how to
>> unmask EL just so they can play their game.
>
> There are always ways to educate users about how to use portage properly.
>
>> So no, in many cases NOT committing straight to stable CAN be
>> detrimental to our users if all they want is a games machine. You could
>> argue that they shouldn't be using Gentoo, but I would argue why should
>> we discriminate?
>>
>
> Ehm, IMHO call it discriminate is a big hard. Are the gnome-2.18 or
> beryl users discriminated or they should be using something different to
> Gentoo? They only thing people have to do is use some ~arch branch
> packages, which isn't too difficult (in Gentoo).
>

Agreed.
All Gentoo beryl users need to use ~arch. I don't think games are so
special that we must provide them on stable arch. Afertall, if games are
keyworded testing, users can add them to /etc/portage/packaage.keywords
if they run a stable system.

> This is how I see it:
>
> Problem with keywording straight to stable is that arch teams are very
> zealous about our stable branch. We put a lot of time trying things to
> not fail in stable, and if an app is broken, we prefer to not force the
> users to compile and install another broken (or unknown to be broken)
> version and work to fix the current stable (patches or bumping) together
> with the maintainer.
>
> But if you send things, that you can't try, to stable, the qa baby jesus
> will cry if it fails, because nobody has taken care of even compile it
> in the arch  :)
>
> Games are not part of core system, so IMHO, use the ~arch branch to have
> the latest cool version to enjoy, could be a good way to go for those
> el1te gam3rs.
>
> Thanks.
>

I also don't agree with having an exception for the games herd. As
others have questioned, how are games more important than security
bumps? If we were considering exceptions, I would argue that allowing
the security team to mark packages as stable would make a lot more
sense, imho.

Anyway, the important point here for the council meeting is whether our
keywording policy is to be enforced or not, regardless of herd, or if /
how we want to have exceptions.


DISCLAIMER: I have no problems with games. I do like to play some, but I
see no problem with using package.keywords.

- --
Jorge Vicetto (jmbsvicetto) - jmbsvicetto at gentoo dot org
Gentoo-forums / Userrel / Proctors
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.3 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFGOxXWcAWygvVEyAIRAgv5AJ9k5N/7Uri+rFCxOZllSp2NwmB67gCfepe3
A1Yj3pwuAI3oo/TODP7N79E=
=UYbe
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
-- 
gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list