Re: [gentoo-dev] Local workarounds with no reported bugs

[Raymond Jennings]

On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 12:23 AM, Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o> wrote:

> Hello, everyone.
>
> I'd like to point out a major problem in Gentoo: there's a fair number
> of developers who add various local workarounds to problems they meet
> and don't bother to report a bug. Worst than that, this applies not
> only for upstream problems but also to Gentoo eclass/ebuild-related
> issues.
>
>
> Example: udev people had problems with MULTILIB_WRAPPED_HEADERS
> in the past. Instead of contacting me (which would result in helpful
> explanation how to do things properly), they abused bash to disable
> the check function implicitly in the ebuilds.
>
> Nobody bothered to inform me of the issue there. Instead, I had to
> notice it looking at the udev ebuilds accidentally. Furthermore, in
> most of the ebuilds the workaround was no longer necessary but nobody
> bothered to check that.
>
>
> Example 2: Coacher had problem with git-r3 not trying fallback URIs
> when earlier URI was https and https wasn't supported in git. So he
> reordered URIs to have https last. With tiny explanation in some random
> commit message.
>
> So we have a problem that affects around a half of git-r3 packages
> (using quick grep, results inaccurate), however minor it is. Worse, it
> affects the policy of preferring https and causes some people to reject
> the policy silently. And nobody gives a damn to report it!
>
>
> Therefore, I'd like to request establishing an official policy against
> workarounds with no associated bug reports.
>
> Your thoughts?
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Michał Górny
> <http://dev.gentoo.org/~mgorny/>
>

+1.

Anything serious enough to require a workaround or an upstream deviation
should be documented in a bug report.

And may also be something we should poke upstream about anyway. If junk
hits us in gentoo, it may have come from upstream and may affect users
outside of gentoo.