Re: [gentoo-dev] package.mask vs ~arch

[Alexandre Rostovtsev]

On Sun, 2014-06-29 at 23:01 -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
> All,
>
> I am starting a new thread so we don't refer to a specific package, but I
> am quoting Rich and hasufell from the previous masking thread.
>
> On Sun, Jun 29, 2014 at 10:04:54AM -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > On Sun, Jun 29, 2014 at 8:36 AM, hasufell <hasufell@g.o> wrote:
> > > This is still too vague for me. If it's expected to be short-term, then
> > > it can as well just land in ~arch.
> >
> > A package that hasn't been tested AT ALL doesn't belong in ~arch.
> > Suppose the maintainer is unable to test some aspect of the package,
> > or any aspect of the package?  Do we want it to break completely for
> > ~arch?  In that event, nobody will run ~arch for that package, and
> > then it still isn't getting tested.
>
> I'm not saying that we should just randomly throw something into ~arch
> without testing it, but ~arch users are running ~arch with the
> understanding that their systems will break from time to time and they
> are expected to be able to deal with it when/if it happens. ~arch is
> not a second stable branch.

I realize that not everybody agrees with me, but I see ~arch as a
"semi-stable" branch - an internally consistent branch for people who
don't feel like maintaining a horrific mess of keywords and masks in
their /etc/portage and don't want to wait weeks/months for bugfixes to
their favorite ebuilds to be marked stable by overworked arch teams, and
who don't mind seeing an occasional build failure or crash as a
consequence of standing closer to the bleeding edge.

In my view, experimental work not ready for general exposure should be
kept in overlays and/or the main tree's package.mask, depending on how
the particular project's workflow is organized.

> > I agree that masking for testing is like having a 3rd branch, but I'm
> > not convinced that this is a bad thing.  ~arch should be for packages
> > that have received rudimentary testing and which are ready for testing
> > by a larger population.  Masking should be used for packages that
> > haven't received rudimentary testing - they might not have been tested
> > at all.
>
> The concern with this argument is  the definition of rudimentary testing
> is subjective, especially when a package supports many possible
> configurations.
>
> I think some packages need wide testing before they go stable, and that
> is where ~arch can help out.
>
> In particular, I would argue that for system-critical packages, users
> should be very careful about running ~arch unless they know what the
> fallout can be.

At any given stability level, a system-critical library ideally ought to
be better-tested than, say, a game or a media player. In practice, this
sometimes doesn't happen, because some system-critical library
maintainers don't care about ~arch users and dump experimental code in
their laps, and in my view that's a bad thing because it encourages
users to come up with ad-hoc mixed arch/~arch setups which have *never*
been tested by any developer.