Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Portage: missing pieces

[Kevin F. Quinn]

On Mon, 10 Jul 2006 19:32:00 +0200
"Molle Bestefich" <molle.bestefich@×××××.com> wrote:

> Richard Fish wrote:
> > Having dozens (hundreds?  all?) ebuilds check for a minimum version
>
> Probably just the ebuilds that happen to use new GCC features before
> the mass of the general public has changed to that version.  But yes,
> a minimum version constraint could theoretically end up in a lot of
> packages.
>
> > of gcc doesn't seem very effecient.
>
> I can't see why it would not be efficient?

Imagine checking over 11,000 packages (over 24,000 ebuilds) against all
stable compiler versions in the tree, working out which versions of the
compiler currently don't allow each package to build successfully and
then adding the relevant code to the ebuild to handle that information.

Now imagine updating a compiler version to fix an issue, then having to
go through the whole tree looking for ebuilds that restrict against
that compiler version, and checking them to see if the restriction can
be lifted.

It may be efficient for the user, but it creates mountains of work for
the volunteer devs whose time is better spent focusing on latest stable
versions.

>
> > I don't think the issue is as simple as either having xine-lib put
> > out a warning about a particular gcc version, as that doesn't work
> > in the general case.
>
> Obviously any solution implemented should work for all ebuilds, not
> just xine-lib.
>
> > And putting the checks in portage doesn't seem to work very well
> > either.
>
> I fail to see how a test in the ebuild for the active
> GCC compiler version wouldn't work?

It wouldn't work in that it's just not maintainable.  There's more to a
process working than just whether a particular piece of code functions
correctly or not.

> > The system as it is now actually seems to work about right... the
> > vast majority of stable users upgrade to new versions of gcc as they
> > come out
>
> Really?
> How do you gather?

Suffice to say that many users track the latest stable versions of
everything on their system.  We don't know how many people stick to old
versions or for how long they do so.  However if many people remained
on old versions of the compiler, I suspect we'd be seeing a lot of bugs
related to that - and we're not seeing them.

> I'd think that most users hadn't even run into this problem (yet),
> because many source code maintainers strive to be able to compile with
> as old a version of GCC as possible..

That's unlikely to be true.  Some upstream developers do maintain
compatibility with a range of compiler versions.  Some upstream
developers only recommend one specific version.  Many will be somewhere
in between.

-- 
Kevin F. Quinn