Re: [gentoo-dev] Several portage trees

[foser]

Peter Fein wrote:
> I think a note saying "DON"T DO THIS UNLESS YOU REALLY KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING",
> as is done elsewhere would suffice.

I disagree, we say that with certain things right now, still users do 
use it without obviously knowing what they're doing and do file bugs 
about it. This is experience speaking.

> Given the recent volume on ebuild approval,
> that's not much of an counter-argument.

That's not much of an argument either. The thread agreed with the fact 
that there were some problems, but they are being worked on. Besides, i 
know of a lot of open ebuild requests that are still not submitted for 
whole other reasons (unstable versions, some old unsupported stuff etc.) 
and probably never will.

> I agree that inclusion in Gentoo-proper
> is a worthy goal - but as a user, not being restricted to blessed packages
> should be my choice (and of course, no one's under any obligation to support any
> of this to begin with, but it's worth discussing).

You stil have the choice, the main point is i think we shouldn't promote 
it. 'restricting' users to 'blessed' packages is a guarantee for the 
best possible experience we can offer, there are ways around it for the 
bold or whatever you want to call them. Anyway, we still don't restrict 
them, every serious ebuild submission is considered.

> Maybe I'm less scared of
> stability issues running Gentoo on a home box that could erupt into flames
> without causing me much distress, but this should be a matter of choice, rather
> than a policy enforced by software.  Such a scheme may actually speed up package
> acceptance, as it provides a wider test base prior to inclusion.

Or hamper ebuild acceptance (may be better terminology), because people 
don't feel the need to get it into the Gentoo bugzilla anymore. And 
testing without feedback hasn't much effect. Testing of non-gentoo 
packages is ignored, we don't support ebuilds not in the tree.

>
> I'd be aware I'd be using non-approved ebuilds if I set those vars in the first
> place & portage warned/notified me which repository it was installing from.
> This architecture rocks - restricting it to approved packages only deprives
> folks of a really great tool (wow, I'm sounding awfully "software wants to be
> free" today...).

More vars, more warnings, increased complexity : it makes great tools 
less and less usable over time. New features should be considered 
carefully if they really add something substantial, in my opinion that's 
not the case here.

There is no restriction imposed, 'depriving' people of easily accessible 
major amounts of low quality, possibly conflicting ebuilds is not a bad 
thing per se.

- foser


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