Re: [gentoo-portage-dev] a feature called "stabilize" wanted

[Marijn Schouten (hkBst)]

On Wednesday 10 March 2010 10:58:45 Johannes Kellner wrote:
> Hello List ans anyone!
>
> I'm searching for a feature or an hint how and where to implement it.
>
> The desired feature could be called "stabilize" or "update to stable"
> and would change the selected packages when doing an update (emerge
> -avuND world).
[snip] 
> Anyone, could help me? Give me a hint if this would be possible? Any
> hints where in code this could be implemented? I'm programmer,
> professional, so if I get the right hints, will invest spare time in
> this. Also I'll ready to setup and run various tests. But I never before
> worked at portage...
> It might be a good start if the people with the Know-How, will start a
> discussing about this idea, what problems need to be solved, which code
> parts will need an update and so one. Than I could try to get it
> working, but right now, I doesn't even know the right questions.
>
> Best regards,
> - Johannes Kellner
>

At first glance your idea seems very interesting. However the versions you end up with under your system critically depends on the timing between when things go stable and when you perform an update. You could skip past a ~ version that is just about to go stable, because a newer ~ was visible, but if you'd waited just a bit longer with syncing and updating you would have gotten the stable version and no further update would have gotten you the newer ~ version.

If you still wish to implement it anyway, then I would suggest that you need a new keyword modifier to indicate ``highest stable version or if that is not available the highest testing version'' and adapt the visibility code to understand that new keyword modifier and make the appropriate versions visible. I don't actually know about portage internals, but this is how I imagine it should work.

Marijn