[gentoo-dev] Re: Change policy about live ebuilds

[Duncan]

Ryan Hill posted on Sun, 21 Nov 2010 13:30:15 -0600 as excerpted:

> On Sun, 21 Nov 2010 19:05:44 +0000
> Markos Chandras <hwoarang@g.o> wrote:
>
>> > Isn't that the point?  People should be discouraged in every way not
>> > to use live ebuilds.  I'd add a third if we had one. :)
>> >
>> Actually not. Users are already familiar with the -9999 concept so
>> there is no point to add extra obstacles in their way. I am trying to
>> find out corner cases where double masking makes sense. Otherwise it
>> makes no sense to me. Actually the majority of users get confused when
>> a package is double masked. Just drop by forums etc and you will see :)
>
> Again, that's the point.  If you can't figure out how to get around a
> double mask then you have no business installing live ebuilds.

As a user who regularly uses certain live ebuilds (and contrasting SP), 
strongly agreed.  If the double-masking is confusing them, they're better 
off sticking with standard versioned ebuilds as they're demonstrably not 
up to dealing with other difficulties which might arise with a live 
package and Gentoo doesn't need the extra bug noise.  Double-masking for 
live ebuilds in the main tree thus seems to me to be the best policy.

For the main tree, anyway.  In overlays, I'd say it's up to the overlay 
maintainers, as in many cases, the overlays are overtly experimental 
already, and just the fact that it's in the overlay not the main tree has 
added a barrier of its own.

It could also be argued whether the general main tree policy should be 
"maintainer's discretion" or not.  Obviously, it's that way already in 
practice.  Should we tighten up QA or make the policy overtly 
"maintainer's discretion"?

-- 
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