[gentoo-dev] Re: Policy for late/slow stabilizations

[Duncan]

Ciaran McCreesh posted on Sun, 27 Jun 2010 18:43:30 +0100 as excerpted:

> On Sun, 27 Jun 2010 20:22:33 +0300
> Markos Chandras <hwoarang@g.o> wrote:
>> > Which does Gentoo care about more: slightly increased convenience for
>> > most developers, or considerably increased inconvenience for users of
>> > minority archs?
>> >
>> I don't follow you. Increased convenience just for the devs? How?
>
> Not having to keep old versions around for a few archs is slightly more
> convenient for most people.
>
> Having to deal with dropped keywords is a huge inconvenience for users
> on minority archs.

As already stated on the other sub-threads, that's not the point at all.  
Rather, it's a simple matter of letting an arch's stable tree dynamically 
and realistically adjust to the level of arch support they have.  If the 
stable set gets small enough, it's probably time to officially reduce the 
arch status to testing tree support only, not security supported, etc.  
But well before that point, it's likely a core package set can be 
maintained at stable, with perhaps certain arch-usage specific area stable 
support as well, while still being unrealistic to try to keep a stable 
version of (nearly) all at-one-point-known-to-work packages available.

If the arch support simply isn't there, it really is better to have that 
reflected in the size of the stable set, such that users actually know 
that and know what's being actively supported on their arch and what 
isn't, than to try to fake it, which is what's going on now.  It's not a 
question of more convenience vs less, but of having arch keyword status 
reflect arch support reality.

That said, if there's not already a simple way to get the info out of VCS 
(perhaps there is, I don't know), archs may wish to maintain a list of 
packages and versions that once were stable, along with comments on 
specific destabilization reason (it didn't work with gcc-vX on that arch, 
for instance) if known, so it'll be somewhat easier to expand stable 
coverage again if we happen to pickup a few new devs with a strong 
interest in the arch.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman