Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: "Paweł Hajdan
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] [gentoo-project] Re: towards a more distributed model
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 07:59:49
Message-Id: 546EF0E9.9020100@gentoo.org
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-dev] [gentoo-project] Re: towards a more distributed model by Ciaran McCreesh
1 On 11/20/14 5:15 PM, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
2 > On Thu, 20 Nov 2014 01:36:32 +0100
3 > hasufell <hasufell@g.o> wrote:
4 >> Exherbo is already running a more modular approach, I'd be interested
5 >> what they have to say about this or which problems they were facing.
6 >
7 > Well the big thing is that unlike Gentoo, Exherbo was able to switch to
8 > using Git for its repositories. On top of that, Exherbo also has proper
9 > automated tinderbox runs (with automated conflict resolution) for
10 > changes, including across repositories, and a much stronger culture of
11 > accepting that breaking changes to APIs and APIs that give an error on
12 > misuse are necessary for a quality product, and a tolerance of
13 > developers making those changes and then applying the fixes to other
14 > people's packages. Distributed is much easier to do if you're starting
15 > from something which is correct and verified...
16
17 I'm glad Exherbo has been mentioned - this gives us something specific
18 to discuss, including how it works in practice. Using git is certainly
19 an advantage.
20
21 Ciaran, could you share more about the automatic tinderbox runs and
22 automated conflict resolution? I look at Exherbo site from time to time
23 but didn't notice this. Please bear with my ignorance, I've even tried
24 searching for things like "Exherbo tinderbox".
25
26 I think you have a good point about necessity of breaking changes from
27 time to time, and APIs that give an error on misuse. This reminds me of
28 these two other good resources:
29
30 <http://www.infoq.com/presentations/effective-api-design> (just the
31 slides are at <http://www.newt.com/java/GoodApiDesign-JoshBloch.pdf>)
32
33 <https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt>
34
35 Note that Linus Torvalds pays very close attention to never break
36 userspace. But within the kernel, large-scale changes are not uncommon,
37 which I think is a good thing.
38
39 Paweł

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