[gentoo-dev] Re: RFC: Project proposal -- maintainer-wanted

[Duncan]

Daniel Pielmeier <daniel.pielmeier@××××××××××.com> posted
6142e6140905150344y4a8007b5wd352ffe891e49230@××××××××××.com, excerpted
below, on  Fri, 15 May 2009 12:44:47 +0200:

> 2009/5/15 Marijn Schouten (hkBst) <hkBst@g.o>:
>>
>> Thilo Bangert wrote:
>>>
>>> Fedora is a much more current distribution than Gentoo - and has been
>>> for a couple of years...
>>
>> Please elaborate what exactly you think Fedora does better than we do.
>> I have no first-hand experience with Fedora, but from what I read I had
>> the impression that sometimes they go with new stuff before it is
>> ready, like KDE4 and pulseaudio. I like about the current situation
>> that we also have all those things available AFAICS, but have very
>> broad choices in how much we want to bleed. IMO this is a different
>> issue than having supposedly popular ebuilds not in main tree.
>>
> AFAIK Fedora is [Red Hat's unstable.] So it makes more sense to
> compare it with the Gentoo unstable tree instead of the stable
> one. Assuming this there is probably not a big difference in the
> up-to-dateness.

Well, yes and no.  As the GP said, they sometimes go with new stuff 
before it's ready -- before Gentoo even has it in-tree hard-masked let 
alone ~arch, while it's still in the various project overlays.   I know 
they've had some serious issues with xorg on Intel GPUs at least, due to 
running versions that aren't in our tree yet, only in the X overlay, 
because Fedora is running clearly not even ~arch-ready packages, 
sometimes even xorg prereleases.

Years ago we'd have put these in-tree but hard-masked for those who 
wanted to try them.  Now, depending on the package and Gentoo but more 
likely as the complexity rises to meta-package levels, those who want to 
try them must load an overlay.  As someone who selectively unmasks and 
tries these, having them in-tree but hard-masked is convenient, but I 
understand why projects may prefer overlays in many cases.

However, none of this directly applies to the subject at hand, because 
while we're talking new versions of packages already in-tree here, the 
subject at hand is packages that aren't in-tree in any form yet.

-- 
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