[gentoo-dev] Why do packages which will not build remain in the distribution list?

[Robert Bradbury]

For the last week or so, there have been packages in the "world"
distribution list which previously installed fine which currently do not,
these include ruby-gdkpixbuf2, ruby-pango, ruby-gtk2, ruby-gnomecanvas2,
ruby-gnome2 and ruby-libglade2 (this is on an x86 system).  My reading of
the bug reports suggest that this is a problem with the ruby/gentoo config
scripts.  If so, ok fine, then pull them from the "world" distribution until
such scripts/ebuilds/patches are available.  Please do not leave them in the
world distribution list when they are known to be defective.  It appears
that there may be some oversight/direction lacking with respect to what
makes up the QA with respect to distributed (e.g. "approved") packages which
have known problems.

For people who attempt to update their systems on a nightly basis and
provide feedback to the Gentoo developers, this can be an annoying situation
(it may require the expansion/contraction of scripts which enable/disable
nightly builds).

I understand if there is a problem with the upstream source which may take
months to fix for the bug reports to percolate up and solutions to percolate
down, but in the mean time end users should not be subjected to packages
known to be problematic (and thus the packages should be pulled from the
world distribution list).

Robert