[gentoo-dev] Re: Dynamic dependencies

[Duncan]

Rich Freeman posted on Thu, 17 Sep 2015 21:46:50 -0400 as excerpted:

> On Thu, Sep 17, 2015 at 8:22 PM, Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@×××.net> wrote:
>> So council was called in, and it asked the portage folks to take some
>> steps that, portage development being what it is, had the effect of
>> slowing down and delaying things for long enough that, hopefully,
>> people have had time to come to terms with the changes, and with a bit
>> of familiarity, see static-deps aren't so bad, after all.
>
> To be clear, the only thing the council did was ask the portage team to
> clarify whether they intended to make it a default, and to provide a
> plan/policy for virtuals/eclasses/etc.

... And AFAIK, that "provide a plan" bit is what ultimately effected the 
delay... particularly as that's exactly what this thread is about, a year 
later.

Which seems to have been the wisdom of Solomon. =:^)  Certainly, some 
plan for eclasses in particular is needed, and somebody needs to come up 
with it.  And asking the party proposing the change to propose a least a 
draft plan for its execution is both traditional and reasonable.  The 
effect of that delaying things a year arguably wasn't entirely 
deliberate, but a delay of say six months at least, could probably have 
been predicted, if anyone thought about it.

> The purpose of the discussions on-list are mostly to try to go ahead and
> figure out what we want to do with virtuals/eclasses/etc so that the
> portage team can make the change when they're ready.  My understanding
> is that they're now fairly eager to do so, but perhaps a bit gun-shy
> about dealing with all the likely bikeshedding.   So, a few council
> members broached the subject so that people can throw their stones at us
> and maybe wear themselves out.  In this way we also protect our generous
> salaries by making the job sound even less enviable than it must already
> seem.  :)

I'm sure they're rather grateful, given the hue and cry[1] last time it 
was presented.  =:^/  As you seem to suggest, however, that's part of the 
job of the council, to be the "the buck stops here" guy when one is 
needed.

> A year ago this got an huge outcry.  Of late I'm barely hearing a
> whimper of protest.  I think that people have been dealing with broken
> dependency resolution long enough with subslots now that they just want
> to see the pain go away.

That was the "wisdom of Solomon" part.  While it did effect a delay, both 
you and I have noted the dramatic difference in tone this time around.

> From what I've heard it hasn't been too
> painful to disable dynamic deps, and I never really had issues with it
> with paludis when I was using it.  I did take a look at the results of
> an emerge --changed-deps world and it came out to 388 packages to
> rebuild, much of it being kde.

Either that --changed-deps, or some other change introduced in portage 
about the same time, seems to have dramatically reduced the number of
not-automatically-resolved blockers I had when I first started using
--dynamic-deps=n.  So my recent static-deps experience is thus indeed 
very reasonable and I agree suitable for default enabling.

But my early experience was far rougher, and I'm not /entirely/ sure what 
the difference is, tho I'm chalking it up to --changed-deps.  If indeed 
that is the difference, as I suggested, it should be considered for 
default along with static-deps, but as it does trigger more rebuilds and 
because of the changed --selective behavior it brings, I consider a news 
item critical, should it be suggested or become the default.

---
[1] Hue and cry:  LOL!  I just looked up the term to ensure I was using 
it appropriately, and it seems it's even more appropriate (and looking 
back at the events I'm describing with it, humorous) than I intended!  
Brits may be more familiar with the term's history than I was, but it 
seems that originally, the term referred to the pursuit of a criminal and 
ensuing general commotion, specifically the shouts to warn others to give 
chase.  That seems particularly descriptive of the commotion surrounding 
this idea last time it was brought up, with people scandalized by the 
very idea, calling for the idea and the people suggesting it to be 
rhetorically ridden out of town as criminals!  Such a contrast to this 
time!

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hue_and_cry

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
nd if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman