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Hi all (well, ok, Hi Kito, Lina and Hasan basically ;)) |
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|
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I'd like to start a little discussion on keywording packages ppc-macos |
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(stable). |
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|
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As you might recall, I've expressed my concerns about broken stable and |
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unstable packages in the tree before, and had some crazy ideas about |
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implementing a testing system on it. Not much advance in that area, |
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mainly due to time limitations, as well as other projects that keep me |
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busy (just to give you a little update): |
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- MonetDB/Armada simulator |
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- MonetDB/5 |
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- Going through historic bug reports on bugzilla for ppc-macos |
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- Emailing you guys in order to try and keep things running |
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|
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Last weekend, when I was in bug-fixing batch-mode, I got into a |
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discussion with Kito, when he encountered another broken package marked |
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as stable. It had no Changelog entry for the stable keyword, but |
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luckily CVS doesn't lie. It brought on the topic of keywording packages |
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stable for ppc-macos. To fuzzy quote Kito: |
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|
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"If an unstable package is broken, that is a serious problem, but ok, |
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it's unstable for a reason. However, if a *stable* package is broken..." |
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|
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I couldn't agree more with this, as stable packages just should work. |
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But I don't think there will be people here that disagree. However, I |
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also agree with Kito that we *should not* mark packages stable when we |
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don't have to. I will elaborate on this stand point from my side here. |
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|
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More and more I start to realise and experience the fact that Portage on |
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OSX as it is now, is nothing more than a dirty hack, which results in |
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much more dirty, tricky, hairy and ugly hacks. We lie, cheat and steal |
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to get Portage doing what we want it to do, and keep on relying on pure |
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coincidence and luck that everything works as portage expects. Hence, |
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saying a package is *stable* is almost a contradiction in itself, as the |
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whole engine behind it (portage) cannot be considered to be solid and |
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stable fitted on OSX. |
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|
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I propose to keep the following keywording rules for whatever we do from |
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now: |
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1) only keyword new packages ~ppc-macos; don't stable them after a month |
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2) only stable new ebuilds if this is required by security stuff and we |
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have an older ebuild that is stable |
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|
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Given the two rules above, there are some extra details: |
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- not stabling packages means no worries on keeping track of them |
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- with the userbase we have (feedback), it feels unreasonable to mark |
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anything stable after a month hearing nothing on it, you don't even know |
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if someone tried it! |
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- by keeping stuff unstable we underline the experimental nature of |
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Portage on OSX and perhaps slow down broad use of Portage |
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- slowing doen further use is good at the moment, because when a new |
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Portage will give us the proper handles, every current user has to |
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switch somehow, and for us big things will change, so better have people |
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starting from scratch then |
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- we are simply in many cases not able to offer an alternative to fink |
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and DP quality wise, we're working hard, but lack the proper setup |
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(think of missing/lacking perl, gtk+, etc) |
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- we reduce running the risk of having a broken stable package in portage |
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- and finally, we will be better prepared to let portage 'force' doing |
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many updates once we stable them if we have a better Portage infrastructure. |
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|
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So, what do you guys think? |
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-- |
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Fabian Groffen |
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eBuild && Porting |
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Gentoo for Mac OS X |
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-- |
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gentoo-osx@g.o mailing list |