Re: [gentoo-dev] Uncoordinated changes

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 3:15 PM, Patrick Lauer <patrick@g.o> wrote:
>
> Please, next time someone has the brilliant idea of changing stuff just
> to change it (I still don't see a reason why we had to change
> metadata.xml?), it should be required that support tools are fixed
> *before* the change, and working versions released. This avoids grumpy
> people and makes it harder for those that change things to head-in-sand
> and claim everything works as expected when it obviously doesn't.
>

A few comments:
This change has been a long time in the making, with plenty of notice.
It even went through the formal GLEP process.  It isn't like there
wasn't ample notice.

If we didn't allow anybody to make any change without taking upon
themselves the responsibility to fix any tool anybody had created that
would be affected, then nobody would change anything, and we'd be
reduced to bitrot.  If anything I think the rate of change in Gentoo
is probably a bit low.  I don't propose changing things for the sake
of change, but contributors should feel free to propose changes and
not expect that they will have to shoulder 100% of the burden of
completely supporting those changes.

It is far more reasonable to provide notice of change, and then the
onus is on those who want specific tools to work to fix them.  If
there is a concern that more time is needed/etc this could be raised
with the council before the change.  I'm sure if the eudev maintainers
had raised a concern at any point the council would have worked with
them.

Ultimately, the only way anybody can be assured that their favorite
Gentoo tool will work in a year is if they're maintaining it.  It
sounds like nobody was really paying attention to it, which is why
nobody noticed that it was going to break.

--
Rich