Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2013-09-10

[Pacho Ramos]

El dom, 15-09-2013 a las 11:03 -0400, Rich Freeman escribió:
[...]
> As I see it we really only have two sustainable options:
>
> 1.  Drop stable keywords on these arches wholesale.
> 2.  Allow maintainers to be more aggressive about dropping stable
> packages when bugs are not closed in a reasonable timeframe (say, 90
> days).
>
> I suspect that #1 may be inevitable for some of these archs, but I'm
> certainly willing to try #2 first and see where that leaves us.  I
> don't like the idea of maintainers having to maintain old versions of
> things like gnome because arch teams put in some time in years past
> but aren't interested in the newer version/etc.
>
> So, how about this as a policy:
> If a maintainer has an open STABLEREQ, or a KEYWORDREQ blocking a
> pending STABLEREQ, for 90 days with archs CCed and otherwise ready to
> be stabilized, the maintainer can remove older stable versions of the
> package at their discretion.  A package is considered ready to be
> stabilized if it has been in the tree for 30 days, and has no known
> major flaws on arches that upstream considers supported.
>
> Note that if upstream doesn't support an arch, then it falls to the
> arch team (and not the maintainer) to support that arch if they want
> it stable.
>
> If the problem is limited to particular groups of packages then the
> new policy would take care of itself - stable keywords would basically
> get dropped until we're down to a set of packages that the arch team
> can support.  If the problem is more widespread, then the new policy
> will basically make stable unusable on that arch as system packages
> get dropped, in which case we're basically back to dropping stable
> keywords.
>
> Again, this has nothing to do with picking and choosing arches to
> support.  This is about defining the responsibility of arch teams if
> they want to be considered stable.  The stable policy is basically a
> contract between arch teams and maintainers, and both sides have to do
> their part to make it work.
>
> Rich
>
>

I guess an important problem is that, once we drop keywords in a
package, a cascade effect can appear. For example, if we drop stable
keywords of gtk+ and pango due pending keywording, we will need to also
drop a ton of packages. And for cases where we would need to drop the
keywording completely, the situation can be even more difficult. 

I remember long time ago HPPA did an important reduce of keywordings in
that arch (I remember they lost most gnome2 packages), not sure if maybe
other arches could need it too :/