Re: [gentoo-project] Dropping unstable packages on minor archs

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 12:28 PM, Jeroen Roovers <jer@g.o> wrote:
> Keyword requests that do not block stabilisation requests should be
> requested by users of the specified architectures or should go
> to /dev/null. Keyword requests that do block stabilisation requests
> should get the same treatment as the stabilisation requests that they
> block. How else would you resolve them?

The situation causing issues is a different one.

1. Tree contains libfoo-1.
2.  Maintainer introduces libfoo-2, dropping keywords due to
significant changes.
3.  Major archs keyword libfoo-2.  Tree is generally updated to work
with libfoo-2.
4.  Maintainer wants to drop libfoo-1, but libfoo-2 is not keyworded
on all the minor archs libfoo-1 is.
5.  Maintainer logs KEYWORDREQ for libfoo-1, and it is ignored.

This leaves us with several options:
a. Don't let the maintainer remove libfoo-1.
   1.  Maintainer continues to care for libfoo-1 - extra work.
   2.  Maintainer is required to care for libfoo-1 but doesn't - complaints/etc.
   3.  Maintainer gets tired of dealing with QA and stops maintaining
libfoo entirely.  Now major arch users are at a loss, and the minor
arch users are no better off.

b. Let the maintainer remove libfoo-1.  Minor arch users have large
numbers of packages break, have cascading keyword removal (no better,
really).

I'm open to suggestions for other options if anybody has them.  I'm
suggesting to allow the option of b.  Maintainers can still choose to
do 1a, and minor arch users are really no worse off than if they were
to do 1b/c.

Rich