Re: [gentoo-dev] Uncoordinated changes

[Rich Freeman]

On Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 4:47 PM, Raymond Jennings <shentino@×××××.com> wrote:
> The guys making the API change bear the burden of fixing anything it breaks,
> however, if something gets officially deprecated, don't go out of your way
> to support continued use.

We tend to do this already for things like PMS, which is as close as
Gentoo gets to something like the kernel API.

However, sometimes a gradual transition doesn't always make as much
sense, and Gentoo doesn't always have the manpower to make every
change a pretty one.

And there is a cost to maintaining that kind of backwards
compatibility.  For example, debian chose to keep its LSB init scripts
and write systemd unit wrappers around them.  If they had chosen
openrc instead I wouldn't be surprised if they kept the LSB init
scripts and wrote an openrc compatibility layer around that.  While
this does provide a more stable experience, it also leaves around a
ton of cruft.

In general I tend to favor a balance.  Trying to get everything just
right was why the git migration literally took years, and even that in
the end had a few bumps.  Gentoo users need to be willing to deal with
the occasionally bump in the road - we try to provide a fairly cutting
edge experience, with minimal layers in integration.

But, there is nothing really wrong with your suggestion, and we try to
accommodate that approach when we can.

> And yes, the personal attacks probably should die down.

++

-- 
Rich