Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: GLEP 19 -- Gentoo Stable Portage Tree

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Tue, 2004-02-03 at 13:58, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> On Tuesday 03 February 2004 16:28, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> >
> > db-4.1.25_p1-r3 KEYWORDS="ia64 ppc amd64 ppc64 hppa"
> > db-4.0.14-r2 KEYWORDS="x86 sparc alpha mips"
>
> For this ebuild we might look into moving db-4.1 into stable. In any case I
> seriously doubt whether it is wise for non-experimental architectures to mark
> ebuilds stable that are not stable for the main arch (x86) (experimental
> being the amd64 and ia64 archs)

What about packages that do not exist for the "main arch"?  I definitely
do not consider ANY arch to be the main one, even though x86 is
definitely the most widely used.  In fact, we need to break ourselves
entirely from the idea of a specific arch and work to make as much arch
independent work as possible.  Duplication of work sucks...

> > Now, depending on which arch you'r eon would entirely depend on which
> > version you get.
> >
> > There should be ZERO updates in the actual stable tree.  You should be
> > able to install a machine on day 1 of the release, or day 89 and still
> > get the EXACT same tree, otherwise, it isn't stable.
>
> Actually I would like to be able to download the tree 10 years from now and
> given that the source files are there it should be possible to build a gentoo
> system (NOT SECURE, not all hardware) that is the same to one from now.

I agree completely.  I think the idea is to only keep a year. 
Personally, I would like to keep the *tree* forever, just only provide
fixes for a year (or however long we decide).

> > Updates would have to be provided separately, though still via rsync.
> > I would see something like /usr/portage-stable and
> > /usr/portage-updates, with -stable being static with the release used
> > and -updates being all the changes since release.
> >
> > It would also make "upgrading" to a new release fairly easy, as a
> > change in /etc/make.conf from VERSION="2004.0" to VERSION="2004.1"
> > would yield the -stable being upgraded to the new release and -updates
> > being propagated with the updates.
>
> It could be that we need to provide some extra upgrade scripts. Maybe we could
> at least provide that first of all portage get's updated in such a case. That
> would allow us to add the infrastructure if needed.

That may very well need to come into being.  I understand that there
will definitely be some bumps in the road going with this sort of
strategy, but I think it lends itself to being the best one for Gentoo
in the long run.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Games Team

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