Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Moving GCC-3.4 to stable on x86

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Wed, 2005-11-30 at 23:17 -0600, R Hill wrote:
> > That makes me feel a bit more comfortable. I still think that something
> > more then an einfo warning should be provided, as its easy to overlook
> > those.
>
> All arches other than x86 have made the switch to 3.4 stable already.  They did
> so without problem and without extra docs.  Why does x86, the last to switch,
> need to be special-cased?

Honestly, it is because x86 is the *vast* majority of our user base.
When we change something there, we get an onslaught of
complaints/comments/opinions.  The truth is that while we have a large
"silent majority" of people that know what we're doing, we also have the
very "vocal minority" of people that only managed to get Gentoo working
because they followed some guide to the letter.  These people freak out
at patch-level bumps that require fix_libtool_files.sh, so I can only
imagine how confusing something like that would be to them.  Yes, the
other arches have done this.  In the case of at least one, they aligned
it with a new profile/release, to ease the pain.  They also were very
sure to announce it beforehand.  Seeing as how I have been on the
receiving end of this border-line harassment for making a change that
doesn't hurt anything, I don't want anyone on my team to make the same
mistake.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux