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On Mon, Jan 21, 2008 at 09:42:21PM -0500, Richard Freeman wrote: |
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> how will a separate portage tree for devs be any different from |
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> what we already have (masking and keywording), |
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Those don't help when it is the 'stable' part of the tree that |
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breaks. The most exasperating problems that I can remember |
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involved basic libraries that were changed (upgraded or removed) in |
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the "stable" tree and that change, in turn, exposed broken |
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dependencies or some such elsewhere. IIRC, libexpat was an example |
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of that and you can see the level of end-user frustration in a |
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thread such as: |
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http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-575655-highlight-libexpat.html |
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> and how will we prevent users getting hit with even worse bugs |
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> because nobody is bothering to test anything in the environment |
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> that end-users actually use? |
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The concept is that there would be a separate team maintaining |
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the stable tree. A precedent for this would be the Linux kernel's |
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two-track development. |
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I use my own mini-two-tree system. I emerge --sync and then |
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wait a week. During that week, many users will encounter bugs and |
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work-arounds start appearing in the forums. After that week, I |
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upgrade in relative confidence that, while my system may break, |
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there is a good chance that there will be a known procedure for |
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fixing it. |
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As a mere end-user, I am not recommending any particular |
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solution. I am suggesting that more effort be devoted to |
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(a) recognizing user frustrations, (b) proposing good solutions, |
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and (c) letting us know that you see the problems and that |
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solutions are being worked on. |
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Regards, |
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John |
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P.S. |
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> What I recommend is running the stable tree in general, and then accepting |
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> only individual packages in ~arch |
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Yes, that is what I do. I would run completely stable but many |
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system essentials (such as, at my last upgrade, the X11 fonts) are |
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masked. |
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P.P.S. Again, my thanks to all developers for their monumental |
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efforts in making the distribution that I want to use. |
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-- |
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