Re: [gentoo-dev] summary: proposed solutions to arches/stable problem

[Ferris McCormick]

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On Wed, 23 Jun 2004, foser wrote:

> On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 20:07 -0500, Jason Huebel wrote:
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> > On Tuesday 22 June 2004 04:54 pm, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> > > Option 2:
> > > STABLE="yes"
> > > STABLE="no"
> > > This is pretty straightforward, so I won't go in depth here.
> >
> > Damn, Donnie beat me to this. I prefer this over all the other solutions
> > presented.
>
> Read my other reply to where you say the same thing : it's duplication
> of info. Duplication is bad.
>
> - foser
>
I don't think it's just duplication.  There have been so many of these, I
am not sure which one to attach this thought to, so I picked this one
because it is short.  And, if I understand your point, this speaks to it.

I am arch(sparc), so for definiteness, I use sparc as a placeholder for
any architecture.

1.  In one instance, if I, as sparc, mark something as KEYWORDS=sparc, it
    means essentially one thing:  In my best judgment this package is 
    stable for use on sparc.  It doesn't say anything about other 
    architectures (except as evidence of goodness).

2.  In a second instance, I am sparc & package maintainer. Now, if I
    mark this package stable on sparc, I might mean one or more of at
    least two possibilities:
      a.  I am package maintainer, I believe this package is stable,
          and I happen to be on sparc.
      b.  I believe this package is stable on sparc, and I happen to
          be its maintainer.

If you are on hppa, say, these three possibilties have different weight
as external evidence on the package's current state; namely,

2.a > 2.b > 1

To be fair, I do not know if the distinction 2.a <--> 2.b I just set up
ever comes up in practice.  But I can imagine realistic cases in which
it could.  (I am sparc only.  Suppose I am working on something which
has endian issues.  I can say with confidence that it is stable on sparc,
but this is much closer to my 2.b example than 2.a, because I cannot test
what I think the vulnerabilities are.)

Maybe I am misunderstanding your point, of maybe I am raising a strawman
which never occurs.  In that case, you can safely ignore my comments.
But to me, the 2.a <--> 2.b distinction is real; perhaps it's one reason
ciaranm wants to see maintainer's reasons along with maintainer's 
judgement.

Regards,
Ferris


- --
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@g.o>
Developer, Gentoo Linux (Sparc)
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