Re: [gentoo-dev] x86 2004.2 Profile

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Fri, 2004-07-09 at 11:37, Grant Goodyear wrote:
> Chris Gianelloni wrote: [Fri Jul 09 2004, 10:42:59AM EDT]
> > For consitency's sake, yes, it is necessary.  I don't want to build a
> > machine today using the 2004.0 profile and build a machine tomorrow
> > using *the same profile* and have one using xfree and one using
> > xorg-x11.
>
> Just to make sure I understand, you're suggesting a new profile that
> removes the absolutely pointless xfree line in the packages file
> (pointless because it's not a system file and we haven't had any xfree
> ebuilds in portage that fail to satisfy the requirement since probably
> the 1.2 days) and change the default x11 virtual to point to xorg-x11?

Yes, the removal of the xfree line from packages would be done.  I would
also change the default virtual for x11, opengl, glu, and xft.

> It's not really clear to me that a new profile needs to be created every
> time a default virtual changes.  My reasoning is that any user who
> already has something installed that satisfies that virtual will see
> absolutely no difference with the new profile.  With X, that would be the
> vast majority of our users, who then might well be more confused
> that using the new profile does _not_ cause them to upgrade to xorg-x11.

I understand that users that switch profiles will see no difference, and
am fine with that.  I'm not worried about people that do that, since we
will in essence not be affecting them at all.  Since the switch from
xfree to xorg-x11 has the potential to be so wide-spread, I think it
should be done with the creation of a new profile.

The idea of changing a virtual mid-release has *always* bothered me and
is a prime example of Gentoo's problems when it comes to enterprise
users.  In an enterprise environment, consistency between releases is
expected.  I should *never* have to wonder which X server got installed
between on each machine between multiple 2004.2 installations.  I should
*know* that 2004.0 and 2004.1 used XFree86 and that 2004.2+ uses X.org's
server.

I have no problem dealing with the users that switch their profiles
themselves and then wonder why they didn't switch X servers rather than
dealing with the inconsistency between installs.

If GCC 3.4 were ready for wide-spread usage, I would recommend changing
it in the packages file, also.  Unfortunately, it is not at that point
yet, so we are not making such a change.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering QA Manager/Games Developer
Gentoo Linux

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