[gentoo-dev] Re: Re: When will KDE 3.5 be marked as stable?

[Duncan]

Bart Braem posted <e3cplj$jv3$1@×××××××××.org>, excerpted below,  on Thu,
04 May 2006 13:48:03 +0200:

> As a user I have to add my opinion here. I have been using Gentoo for some
> years now and it was always fairly up to date. Currently KDE is really
> behind on the current situation upstream.
> And then I wonder why. What makes us think we can not trust the KDE devs?
> Does compiling KDE introduce so many bugs? I mean, let's be serious, all
> other distributions have a stable 3.5.x now. Don't they experience all
> those horrible bugs?
> Seriously, this is really becoming an issue. As I pointed out in a bug I
> filed for a stable KDE (for which I apologize, I should have looked here
> first), some people are leaving Gentoo because of this slow upgrade
> process.


I'm just another user, not a dev.  Please keep that in mind as you read
the following.

That KDE was two releases behind, even on cooker for AMD64 (which
unfortunately followed stable for i586, not cooker for i586), was the
reason I left Mandrake, so I know exactly where you are coming from.

That said, you've hit a sore spot -- illogical people asking for
something, choosing it when given the choice, and then when they get it,
complaining about what they chose in the first place, when the other
choice remains right at hand for them to change their mind and switch to
at any point!  Exactly that -- illogical!

/Why/ are people leaving over this??  The ebuilds are there in ~arch and
have been for some time. If people want cutting edge, Gentoo continues to
provide pretty damn close, often having (still masked because upstream
isn't available at the time) ebuilds in the tree even before public
release, as I know for a fact has been the case with KDE, as I've seen the
ebuilds and the masks there, before the releases, complete with the reason
for masking given as upstream not released yet.

Stable is there if they want it, too.  They can choose to run stable. 
There's nothing wrong with that, just as there's nothing wrong with
making an informed decision to run unstable. If they want to leave for
some other distribution, for whatever reason, that's fine and good. There
are legitimate reasons to do so, places (like binary packages and
periodic releases with few updates between them) where Gentoo isn't as
strong, because it chooses other areas to emphasize. Deciding to stick
with (IMO consistently outdated, but hey, if people want stable...)
stable, then being unhappy with devs for not choosing to stable-keyword
something with known issues, isn't such a legitimate reason, when they
have the choice to upgrade at any time they choose, regardless of stable
status, as the ebuilds are there for them to do so and the general Gentoo
documentation is clear in its instructions as to how to do so, if desired. 

It's up to an admin whether they want to risk running unstable on nothing,
individual packages, whole categories (kde-base) of packages, or their
entire system.  Why then are those same admins complaining when devs take
their responsibility to do the best they can to ensure something's stable
before marking it such, seriously.  I can envision the /same/ admins
complaining that the devs didn't do their job if the issues remained and
the packages were stabilized even with known issues.

As for trusting or not the KDE devs, that's not the issue.  Either there
are still known problems  on Gentoo, or there aren't.  It doesn't matter
if those were upstream problems or Gentoo problems, in this case, only
whether there are problems on Gentoo or not. As it happens, many of the
problems with 3.5.0 were upstreamm and have been resolved with 3.5.1 or
3.5.2. That took time. 3.5.0 won't ever make stable as it has issues since
fixed with further upstream releases. 3.5.1 likely won't either. 3.5.2 has
fixed many/most of them, but it hasn't been much more than 30 days since
its release, and Gentoo normally requires a package to be bug-free for 30
days in ~arch before going stable, so it's only now qualified.

Meanwhile, those who want to risk running the unstable packages and are
willing to live with or provide patches for the bugs (bugs which after
all are there in bugzilla, if anyone wants to know what the holdup is)...
can do just that since the ebuilds are there from the day of release and
often even /before/ release!  That they don't choose to do so is their
choice and their responsibility, not that of Gentoo.

Note that due to Gentoo slotting, it's not even necessary to give up the
stable KDE to merge the still unstable version!  With slots, they can
exist quite well in parallel.

Now it'd be rather different if the ebuilds weren't there.  As I said, I
left Mandrake over such things.  However, they /are/ there.  The choice to
merge them or not is the user/admin's.  If they chose not to do so, why
are they then blaming Gentoo for their own choice?

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


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