Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Jeroen Roovers]

On 01 Mar 2008 05:30:01
Mike Frysinger <vapier@g.o> wrote:

> This is your monthly friendly reminder !  Same bat time (typically
> the 2nd Thursday at 2000 UTC / 1600 EST), same bat channel
> (#gentoo-council @ irc.freenode.net) !
>
> If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> Gentoo dev list to see.

The list of architectures that Gentoo supports is one of its greatest
assets. It is important that Gentoo makes available an as large as
possible set of packages to as many platforms as is sanely doable. For
this purpose we have a testing and stabilisation system that depends on
architecture keywords being propagated from one version to the next. I
would like to stress to all package maintainers that dropping keywords,
i.e. removing any architecture's keyword entirely, instead of replacing
"arch" with "~arch", _hurts_ the Gentoo Project.

Dropping a keyword should be done in exactly three cases:
1) When newly added dependencies for a version have not been keyworded.
2) When there is evidence that the new version contains architecture
porting regressions, i.e. upstream knows or strongly suspects that a
specific version no longer supports a specific architecture.
3) When a precompiled version is not available for a specific
architecture.

When a keyword is being dropped for one of the three reasons stated
above, the relevant arch team should be notified by way of a bug,
assigned to the package maintainer, and the arch team should be CC'd,
explaining what should be done to validate readding the dropped
keyword. Of course, if any dependencies can be keyworded in advance of
adding the ebuild for which keywords would need to be dropped, as long
as the arch teams respond in due time by keywording the new
dependencies, dropping the keywords can be prevented entirely and fewer
developers will get less work on their hands, but this does require
better planning, and possibly holding off committing the new ebuild for
a week (or two).

When keywords have been dropped invalidly, a bug should be reported and
assigned to the package maintainer. Arch teams should not be burdened
with this task but may be CC'd on the bug to notify them of the
situation. It should be clear to all ebuild developers that maintaining
keywords is not the domain of the arch teams: Like the rest of any
ebuild, it is the maintainer's responsibility to ensure keywords are
soundly propagated from one version to the next, and the maintainer's
responsibility to correct when a keyword has been dropped.
-- 
gentoo-dev@l.g.o mailing list