Re: [gentoo-dev] package.mask

[Daniel Robbins]

On Sat, Apr 14, 2001 at 07:14:56PM +0200, Achim Gottinger wrote:

> Here is an alternative to the package.mask concept. We can start tagging
> packages in the cvs tree.  So by default you whould checkout the latest rc
> instead of the in development versions. If you want to add a development
> version to your system you can checkout manually.  Instead of using the
> gentoo version number for tagging we can use "stable" for all packages not in
> development.  This should be sufficient for the beginning, but in the future
> I think we need to use the version numbers.  The past shows that it is a nice
> idea to have an allways up to date system, but some updates can create lots
> of unexpectable bugs. To avoid messing up all our users system, we can
> instead maintain our different releases separate and make only security fixes
> to them. So you can allways have a secure rc4,rc5 1.0 1.1 ....

I'm not a big fan of cvs, so I'd rather avoid using cvs to handle different
versions of Gentoo, except as a last resort.  In the future, I think we'll
probably have a stable and development branch of Gentoo Linux.  But I only want
to have a maximum of two (maybe three if we are working on a new stable
release) active, secure branches of Gentoo Linux at any time.  If possible, I
think we should look for ways to avoid dividing Gentoo Linux using cvs because
generally this ends up splitting the development team into two camps, or
doubling the work of the active developers such as yourself, because then we
are effectively supporting two separate versions of Gentoo Linux at the same
time.

Soon, we'll have all the features in Portage to ensure that the *right*
versions of packages get installed (not just the most recent that satisifies
the dependency).  If we then focus on ensuring that all the various ebuilds on
CVS will compile under any version of Gentoo Linux, then I don't think we have
a problem anymore.  We can have certain expectations as to ebuild compatibility
-- for example, we can make a rule that any Gentoo Linux 1.x ebuild should be
able to compile on any other Gentoo Linux 1.x system (whether "stable" or
"current").  If an ebuild doesn't meet this rule, then this particular version
should be blocked out of the appropriate packages files, i.e.
<=sys-apps/bash-2.05 would block out sys-apps/bash-2.06 or later.

But until we reach version 1.0, we shouldn't even be thinking about creating a
"stable" or "unstable" branch of Gentoo Linux.... everything on cvs is
"unstable" (technically) at this point.  Or, as the BSD people prefer calling
it -- "current".

-- 
Daniel Robbins					<drobbins@g.o>
President/CEO					http://www.gentoo.org 
Gentoo Technologies, Inc.