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Hi, |
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|
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TL;DR: If a QA check is enforced by Portage for a reasonably long time, |
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does it constitute policy? Or can it be changed unilaterally by Portage |
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team? |
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|
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William Hubbs has recently attempted to remove one of Portage's QA |
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checks [1]. Not only we disagree on the change in question, we also |
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disagree on whether the original behavior constitutes policy. I'd like |
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to bring the latter to wider discussion, without focusing on this |
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particular example. |
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FWIU, William's argument is that the QA team has not formally approved |
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such a policy (did QA even exist back then?), therefore it is not a |
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binding policy and can be changed through internal Portage patch review. |
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|
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I disagree with this assessment. This check that has been present |
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in Portage since at least 2005, and has reliably enforced specific way |
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of writing ebuilds (influencing e.g. gen_usr_ldscript() function). |
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After 14 years, I believe this certainly counts as de-facto policy |
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and is not something to be changed lightly. Such change needs to be |
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discussed on gentoo-dev@, and preferably supported by the research |
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of the original rationale. |
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|
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This is not the only QA check in Portage that reliably affects how we |
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are writing ebuilds today, yet were never formally approved or written |
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down in developer documentation. I think that this is partially simply |
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because there were never major disagreement about them, and since |
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Portage has reliably enforced them there were never any real need to |
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take them elsewhere. I think they should be considered equally to well- |
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defined policies. |
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|
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Hence, my question: should the policies implied by historical Portage |
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checks be considered official, and be changed with due diligence? Or |
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should they be merely considered implementation details, and should |
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Portage developers make unilateral decisions on changing or removing |
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them? |
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[1] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage-dev/message/6e4cfbb0ef9c36dc6511d4f2003cc458 |
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-- |
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Best regards, |
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Michał Górny |