Gentoo Archives: gentoo-osx

From: Grobian <grobian@g.o>
To: gentoo-osx@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-osx] On keywording ppc-macos
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 17:31:02
Message-Id: 430B5D1B.1000309@gentoo.org
1 Hi all (well, ok, Hi Kito, Lina and Hasan basically ;))
2
3 I'd like to start a little discussion on keywording packages ppc-macos
4 (stable).
5
6 As you might recall, I've expressed my concerns about broken stable and
7 unstable packages in the tree before, and had some crazy ideas about
8 implementing a testing system on it. Not much advance in that area,
9 mainly due to time limitations, as well as other projects that keep me
10 busy (just to give you a little update):
11 - MonetDB/Armada simulator
12 - MonetDB/5
13 - Going through historic bug reports on bugzilla for ppc-macos
14 - Emailing you guys in order to try and keep things running
15
16 Last weekend, when I was in bug-fixing batch-mode, I got into a
17 discussion with Kito, when he encountered another broken package marked
18 as stable. It had no Changelog entry for the stable keyword, but
19 luckily CVS doesn't lie. It brought on the topic of keywording packages
20 stable for ppc-macos. To fuzzy quote Kito:
21
22 "If an unstable package is broken, that is a serious problem, but ok,
23 it's unstable for a reason. However, if a *stable* package is broken..."
24
25 I couldn't agree more with this, as stable packages just should work.
26 But I don't think there will be people here that disagree. However, I
27 also agree with Kito that we *should not* mark packages stable when we
28 don't have to. I will elaborate on this stand point from my side here.
29
30 More and more I start to realise and experience the fact that Portage on
31 OSX as it is now, is nothing more than a dirty hack, which results in
32 much more dirty, tricky, hairy and ugly hacks. We lie, cheat and steal
33 to get Portage doing what we want it to do, and keep on relying on pure
34 coincidence and luck that everything works as portage expects. Hence,
35 saying a package is *stable* is almost a contradiction in itself, as the
36 whole engine behind it (portage) cannot be considered to be solid and
37 stable fitted on OSX.
38
39 I propose to keep the following keywording rules for whatever we do from
40 now:
41 1) only keyword new packages ~ppc-macos; don't stable them after a month
42 2) only stable new ebuilds if this is required by security stuff and we
43 have an older ebuild that is stable
44
45 Given the two rules above, there are some extra details:
46 - not stabling packages means no worries on keeping track of them
47 - with the userbase we have (feedback), it feels unreasonable to mark
48 anything stable after a month hearing nothing on it, you don't even know
49 if someone tried it!
50 - by keeping stuff unstable we underline the experimental nature of
51 Portage on OSX and perhaps slow down broad use of Portage
52 - slowing doen further use is good at the moment, because when a new
53 Portage will give us the proper handles, every current user has to
54 switch somehow, and for us big things will change, so better have people
55 starting from scratch then
56 - we are simply in many cases not able to offer an alternative to fink
57 and DP quality wise, we're working hard, but lack the proper setup
58 (think of missing/lacking perl, gtk+, etc)
59 - we reduce running the risk of having a broken stable package in portage
60 - and finally, we will be better prepared to let portage 'force' doing
61 many updates once we stable them if we have a better Portage infrastructure.
62
63 So, what do you guys think?
64
65
66 --
67 Fabian Groffen
68 eBuild && Porting
69 Gentoo for Mac OS X
70 --
71 gentoo-osx@g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-osx] On keywording ppc-macos Nick Dimiduk <ndimiduk@g.o>
Re: [gentoo-osx] On keywording ppc-macos Kito <kito@g.o>