1 |
Hi, |
2 |
|
3 |
On 11/13/2013 12:39 PM, Tom Wijsman wrote: |
4 |
> On Wed, 13 Nov 2013 10:28:02 +0000 (UTC) |
5 |
> Martin Vaeth <vaeth@××××××××××××××××××××××××.de> wrote: |
6 |
> |
7 |
>> Hello. |
8 |
>> |
9 |
>> The new "features" use.stable.mask and package.use.stable.mask |
10 |
>> have turned maintaining systems with mixed ARCH and ~ARCH keywords |
11 |
>> into a nightmare: |
12 |
> |
13 |
> They are considered unsupported by many; so, going down that path you |
14 |
> need to be acquainted with Portage enough to keep a consistent system. |
15 |
|
16 |
This argument has come up several times, but is it valid? For me |
17 |
and other people I know, the main reason to use Gentoo is the |
18 |
rolling release model and this implies that you can mix package |
19 |
versions as long as version dependencies are satisfied. When the |
20 |
dependency is "cat/package" then this should mean that it works |
21 |
with every version. If it does not, then the ebuild's |
22 |
dependencies should be updated. |
23 |
|
24 |
The handbook says nothing about "unsupported": |
25 |
|
26 |
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-amd64.xml?part=3&chap=3 |
27 |
|
28 |
If "many" choose to change this policy, there is no reason |
29 |
anymore for me to use Gentoo. |
30 |
|
31 |
>> Similarly to the (fortunately dropped) concept of forcing |
32 |
>> useflags if certain packages are installed this forces a |
33 |
>> magic on the user which can hardly be managed since it is |
34 |
>> not clearly presented to the user but hidden in some profiles. |
35 |
>> |
36 |
>> As I understand, it tries to solve a "social" issue |
37 |
>> (that an ARCH user might set a USE-flag which eventually |
38 |
>> pulls in an ~ARCH package) on a technical level |
39 |
>> (by forcibly disabling the USE-flag for the user). |
40 |
> |
41 |
> That's one approach, it might also be used when a package can be |
42 |
> stabilized but a certain of feature of the package cannot; eg. |
43 |
> USE="minimal" could be broken on a certain package because it removed a |
44 |
> bit too much, thus it could be stabilized with USE="-minimal" forced. |
45 |
> |
46 |
> Anyhow, I think we should make sure to weight "why we need to have it" |
47 |
> against "how it bothers which users"; and not just focus on users alone. |
48 |
> |
49 |
> And other than that, are there alternatives? Something we can do better? |
50 |
|
51 |
We could consider reducing the feature set of portage and live |
52 |
with the "problems" that arise. When I started using Gentoo a |
53 |
package could simply not go stable until all dependencies for all |
54 |
USE flags were also stable. Masking USE flags was reserved to a |
55 |
short list of very special architecture depend special cases. |
56 |
|
57 |
[...] |
58 |
|
59 |
>> 2. Just a few days ago dev-lang/python-exec:2 became stable |
60 |
>> on amd64, but dev-python/python-exec:2 is still ~amd64. |
61 |
>> Just to be sure to not miss anything, I have put the latter |
62 |
>> into package.accept_keywords, and hell break loose: |
63 |
> |
64 |
> Hell indeed breaks loose if you mix stable and unstable; but note that |
65 |
> this package had an accident, see the related news item for details. |
66 |
|
67 |
Do you mean stable and unstable in this case, or in general? |
68 |
|
69 |
[...] |
70 |
|
71 |
In general I share the sentiment. The complexity of using |
72 |
portage has increased a lot lately. Not only does it take long |
73 |
to find out why things suddenly go wrong after tree sync, also |
74 |
just the time until 'emerge -avUDN world' comes back with a |
75 |
proposal has grown to several minutes where it was few seconds |
76 |
when I started with Gentoo. |
77 |
|
78 |
There has been a lot of effort to make revdep-rebuild unessecary, |
79 |
but now that it is mostly implemented, I don't know if it was |
80 |
worth the price. I spend more time now just reconfiguring |
81 |
keywords to update the system than I spent back in the old days |
82 |
where revdep would just fix things. If the answer is, that I |
83 |
should not mix arch and ~arch, then I'll not use Gentoo anymore. |
84 |
|
85 |
Cheers, |
86 |
Thomas |
87 |
|
88 |
|
89 |
-- |
90 |
Thomas Kahle |