Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@g.o>
To: Jani Monoses <jani@××.ro>
Cc: gentoo-dev@g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] package masking too conservative?
Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2003 17:18:50
Message-Id: 1060190681.19001.313.camel@vertigo
In Reply to: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] package masking too conservative? by Jani Monoses
1 On Wed, 2003-08-06 at 12:07, Jani Monoses wrote:
2 > Hi all
3 > no flame bait or anything but IMHO some packages are way too much in the
4 > masked state. I don't know the exact QA policy but it's probably do not
5 > annoy users by installing bleeding-edge software let the brave ones
6 > unmask explicitely. This is fine but I think it's applied to generically
7 > While I understand that few people would want the latest glibc, XFree
8 > snapshot or KDE form CVS, masking also applies to standalone programs
9 > which don't really affect general system stability. Many of these are
10 > programs in active development with pretty frequent releases where the
11 > developers are looking for feedback and where they generally release
12 > when they consider they improved.There are probably counter-examples
13 > too though...
14 > Ex: ebuilds for subversion , distcc, valgrind, scons are either
15 > entirely masked or generally lagging behind a couple of releases wrt the
16 > 'unstable' ebuild.
17 > The policy that 'if for an amount of time there are no bugs reported
18 > against' they are made stable is again two-edged: there's less testing
19 > of latest releases so only a smaller procent of the gentoo crowd
20 > actually provides feedback to their development. More like those RPM
21 > based distros :)
22 >
23 > Especially because many tools I find are undeservingly masked are
24 > developer oriented so there's a greater chance feedback will be sane and
25 > prompt.
26 >
27 > I'd propose to loosen this policy a bit, but then again who am I?
28 >
29 > Jani
30 >
31 > cc: please
32 >
33 >
34 > --
35 > gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list
36
37 Just my quick .02...
38
39 You can always mask packages which are ~arch. After all, ~arch is the
40 "testing" branch in Gentoo, and not really considered an "unstable"
41 branch. If you're willing to participate in testing, then you should
42 probably have KEYWORDS=~arch in your /etc/make.conf anyway. The
43 "stable" branch is supposed to be tried and true. You know it'll work.
44 The idea is to not be sending packages which may be broken to
45 unsuspecting users. Also, there is stable.gentoo.org, which can be used
46 to vote on packages that are in testing to make them stable. I think if
47 more people were using this facility, it would provide for a much
48 quicker transition for many packages.
49
50 --
51 Chris Gianelloni
52 Developer, Gentoo Linux

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Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] package masking too conservative? Jani Monoses <jani@××.ro>