Re: [gentoo-user] Reasons for testing or stable of kde packages

[Holly Bostick]

Marco Calviani schreef:
> Hi list, i would like to have clarification regarding the policy of
> switching packages from testing to stable. Is this policy due to
> particular bugs in the packages?
>
No. Gentoo's "stable" and "testing" refers to the /ebuilds/, not the
packages.

I'm not a dev, but from my experience, if upstream (the developers of a
particular package) release the package, then it is considered to be
'stable' (insofar as it's releaseable, and Gentoo does not include betas
or development versions in the Portage tree).

However, the ebuild script that allows the package to compile on Gentoo
may contain errors, so it must be tested. That is what ~ARCH is about;
making sure the provided ebuild compiles the source of the application
correctly and successfully with relationship to the rest of a Gentoo system.

~ARCH packages/ebuilds are normally tested for (30? 90?) days, after
which time if no bugs are filed, they generally move into stable. It is
hoped that users who use ~ARCH are willing to file or comment on bugs on
bugs.gentoo.org (b.g.o). The system only works if everybody helps.

If a package itself contains serious errors (fairly easily discerned
from a filed bug whether the problem is the ebuild or the package),
you'll see it getting hard-masked pretty darn quick (that's what
hard-masking is for/about-- it generally means the package itself is
broken), while we wait for upstream to fix whatever is wrong.

While 'testing' is just that, and therefore not specifically 'stable',
in practice testing usually is pretty stable (all problems I've had I've
been able to overcome myself, despite not being a developer or any kind
of programmer who understands deeply what's actually going on). However,
sometimes testing does expose upstream bugs that cause the package to
break (or break on your system), so ultimately, it's not "safe" (as in
"safe as houses"), but it's not like it's usually risking your system
stability in a major way (i.e., you can't boot, or the system fails to
operate, etc.)

HTH,
Holly
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