[gentoo-dev] Tagging Releases (Attn Developers)

[Todd Wright]

> From Gentoo-User:
> > Having levels allow the adventurous to run a bleeding edge system, the
> > middle 80% can run a system that is maybe a few weeks behind the bleeding
> > edge. Those who need a more stable platform can stay, say, 3 months
> > behind (of course any individual package can be overridden at any level,
> > and these time periods are meant as illustrations only). A production
> > server doesn't need levels for the exact reason you specify: Smart
> > sysadmins won't do 'emerge --update world' on a production system.

I think rather than a feature flag (ie: --type=security, --type=feature, etc as has been suggested) what the developers need more than anything is a mehtod to "nail down" a particular portage tree to a particular Gentoo release level. This may well be at the package level (individual ebuilds or whatever)

That way, people could install Gentoo 1.0 at any time, even after the release of 2.0, taking into account any fixes and security (or other) patches that are relevent to the 1.0 release.  Then the users have a choice - run with leading edge, or select a particular stable release.

Other distributions keep entire copies of older releases (usually in binary form) for just this reason.

Right now, installing a particular Gentoo release is like nailing jelly to a wall, since the portage tree changes every day, and there is no way to say "show me 1.0 plus fixes" as opposed to "give me the latest version".

Its even worse at the moment, given that 1.1a masquerades as 1.0

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