Re: [gentoo-dev] Reliance on undocumented behaviour [WAS: Arches marking ebuilds stable before maintainer]

[Jason Stubbs]

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On Monday 21 June 2004 07:55, Travis Tilley wrote:
> On Saturday 19 June 2004 11:21 am, foser wrote:
> > -* means broken on all arches by definition. Sure it's a pretty good
> > solution here for what you want to do, but it still is bending the
> > rules.
>
> -* is the only way to add an ebuild for testing without forcing it on ~arch
> users. i still have -* in keywords for the convenience of x86 users who
> want to test and port x86 software to gcc 3.4 (and submit patches on
> bugzilla) by simply adding "sys-devel/gcc -*" to package.keywords.

Adding 'sys-devel/gcc -*' to package.keywords is *INCORRECT*. This is 
undocumented (and IMO broken) behaviour that cannot be relied upon. As foser 
said, "-* means broken on all arches by definition." Instead you should be 
encouraging the testers (and yourself) to copy the ebuild to your overlay and 
editing the KEYWORDS.

Same goes for any other undocumented behaviour of portage. Don't try 
something, find it works and then use it - especially not in ebuilds. Doing 
so only slows down the progress of enhancements to portage as all whole heap 
of ugly crappy annoying backwards compatibility code (for something that was 
unintentional, mind you) needs to be maintained.

If you don't know how to do it, ask. If it's not yet available, ask louder.

Regards,
Jason Stubbs
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