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

[Holly Bostick]

Marco Calviani schreef:
> Hi Holly, and thanks for your clear explanation,
>
>>> 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.
>
> Well, that was my fault in explaining..... i was referring to
> "versions" of a particular package....
>
>> ~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.
>>
>
> At the root of my question there was the need to understand why kde
> 3.5.1 packages are still testing even if there aren't critical bugs
> at bugs.gentoo.org (as far as i was able to find...).
>

Possibly because KDE is a huge suite of interrelated packages, /all/ of
which must be 'stable' (in ebuild terms) so that users who have
expectations of what 'stable' means will be satisfied (especially for
those who run ARCH and do not use ~ARCH packages). This may be why it
takes a longer time for Gentoo to move all of those packages into ARCH;
a single package is obviously easier to test than the many split ebuilds
that KDE contains, especially when varied combinations are involved.

I recognize that 'stable' users value... stability... over "the latest and
greatest", and that's fine. But it always annoys me somewhat when users
then 'complain' about 'the latest and greatest' not being moved into
stable in a "timely" (in their opinion) fashion. Either one wants guaranteed
stability, or one is willing to possibly sacrifice some of that
stability for new features or "cool factor" or whatever. The choice,
like most things, Gentoo, is up to the user, and Gentoo users should
always be aware that they need to explicitly choose and commit to their
decision.

Of course, that wouldn't be a reasonable position if one didn't trust
the dev's judgement, but in fact, that's almost the first choice a
Gentoo user needs to make; certainly about the status of the Portage
tree, if one is not going to monitor or participate in the activities of
the dev team (in this case, the KDE herd, I suppose).

After all, if you think about it, the gentoo-*users* list is not really
a logical place to seek answers as to why a specific arm of the
development team has taken or not taken a specific action. Not that the
dev list wants to hear anybody nagging them about this, mind you, but I
would imagine that if any discussion is going on as to progress of
migrating the ebuilds to stable, it would be there rather than here (so
one could lurk and find out what was going on, if one cared to), or on
an IRC channel (if one exists) or something like that. Possibly even on
b.g.o., if someone has filed a bug to move KDE to stable (that happens),
and a dev has responded to that bug with a reason why or why not, or
with a "we're doing it, buzz off!"

Gentoo is a very hands-on distro, and everyone can get involved to the
extent that they're capable, and everyone is capable to some extent,
because the extensive documentation enables one to know enough to do
/something/ (write an ebuild, update an ebuild, file a bug, comment on a
bug, etc).

This is not some back-room, behind-closed-doors, "we don't want to hear
from you if you don't send a patch" kind of dealie, so if you want to
know the progress of the KDE herd in migrating KDE 3.5.x to stable, I'm
sure it's possible to find out without a lot of difficulty. Just not
necessarily from us, unless somebody who does monitor the KDE herd
happens to be around (which is not a particularly efficient way of
getting an answer to your question).

:-)

Holly
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