Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Unstable branch proposal - second round

[Aaron Cohen <acohen@clarku.edu>]

Great, we will be a Debian Want a be!
On Mon, 2002-03-25 at 06:23, Troy Dack wrote:
> ( new post @ bottom, original left in for continuity ... )
> 
> On Sun, 17 Mar 2002 06:46, George Shapovalov thought that we needed this:
> 
> > Hi All.
> > 
> > I just looked again through the recent thread and here are some thoughts I
> > would like to throw out.
> > The thread did not see that much of activity and I thought that timing was
> > not right - during the feature freeze right before 1.0 release. Then I
> > gave it a second thought and here are a few things I would like to bring
> > here. I will try to summarise the previous discussion and then propose
> > some stuff which if accepted will require a minor addition to existing
> > functionality and may even go in the tree before release (or to 1.x
> > version).
> > 
> > Now to the issue.
> > Technically I would not call the proposed  an "unstable branch". The core
> > which is a portage system and supporting infrastructure is going to stay
> > the same, there has been no call to fork that as far as I can tell (and I
> > am not about to do that either). The call was for producing new ebuild
> > submission system.
> > At present gentoo definitely allows submission of new ebuilds - you just
> > have to go to bugs.gentoo.org and submit an ebuild as described in manual,
> > then it gets reviewed by core developer and goes into
> > /usr/portage/incoming/ and later gets incorporated into the portage tree.
> > While a very sound submission protocol it is not very scalable if  ebuild
> > submissions are expected to grow significantly. In such case a
> > decentralised submission/review schema is desired.
> > 
> > One proposed way of doing this was to setup a self-managed "mirror", which
> > should accept all packages from developers but keep them local. New
> > submissions will get reviewed by community and later manually incorporated
> > into the main tree by core developers.
> > While this allows better exposure of new submissions it does not prevent
> > the bottleneck - core developers will be just as occupied. Than
> > self-managed sound like a way to start a big mess unless somebody is going
> > to spend a lot of time actively maintaining thing, compiling lists of a
> > "worthy", "confirmed by majority", etc.. ebuilds. And actively pushing
> > them to the core group. Also having to worry about separate system
> > incarnation looks like a possibility to start a fork where you might avoid
> > doing so. After all these systems will have different requirements.
> > 
> > Another possibility is to use the same infrastructure, but add new
> > specificator to the package name, which will mark it as "unstable". Allow
> > unstable ebuilds to appear in the main tree but these will be installed
> > (and reported) only if you use special flag (for example --allow-unstable)
> > with emerge (ebuild as a low-level utility I guess should just do whatever
> > you ask it to). After all this is similar to what people do now with not
> > yet incorporated ebuilds.
> > Users of unstable ebuilds can and are requested to report on
> > usability/stability of an ebuild by setting some flag in the package dir
> > or somewhere in the database, which should be counted when user rsyncs
> > again. Certain policy can be set, so that for example packages
> > accumulating enough voices should automatically be granted for example
> > "confirmed" status. There might be additional layer of (even manual) check
> > through which the package should go to get "approved" status (and the
> > removal of specificator form ebuild name).
> > I am apparently thinking in favour of this one as it seems things can be
> > setup more cleanly this way (avoiding any reason for possible forking)
> > while allowing everybody to have easier access to all functionality. Users
> > can choose to stick with "approved" packages if stability is of most
> > concern, "confirmed" if some more functionality is desired or even
> > "unstable" to access all packages (and of course anybody anytime can
> > force-install any package). To provide this functionality emerge can check
> > make.conf for -allow-status flag for example. The tree can even be
> > synchronised on user machine according to set stability level.
> > The main benefit of setting up something along these lines is that newly
> > submitted ebuilds get much broader attention. Especially recalling
> > numerous calls for setting up the list of new ebuild submissions so that
> > newcomers can start to actively contribute to the system, while allowing
> > "core" people to concentrate on essential stuff.
> > 
> > George
> 
> George,
>         After reading the messages in this thread (particularly the last two 
> posted by you) I'd like to say that I agree with you and to add a couple of 
> thoughts of my own.
> 
> I like the idea of having ebuilds submitted via bugs.gentoo.org being made 
> easily available to all gentoo users -- keeping one interface for 
> submission is a good idea.
> 
> However instead of (as well as) your multiple package state levels how 
> about this (this is all just hypthesis, I don't know if it is possible, I 
> don't know enough about all the tools used):
> 
> Multiple cvs branches along the lines of this:
> 
> Testing Branch  - primarily for use by developers.
>                 - new ebuilds from bugs.gentoo.org come in here
>                 - If there is no activity on an ebuild (it's bug)
>                   for 14 days it get's moved to Unstable
> 
> Unstable Branch - ebuilds that have made it out of testing and *should*
>                   work for most users
>                 - flagged as Stable after 28 days of nil activity on the bug
>                 - need to be reviewd by gentoo dev team before getting into
>                   Stable
> 
> Stable Branch   - ebuilds that have made it out of Unstable and are suitable
>                   for general consupmtion.
>                 - the beginning of the "next" gentoo release branch
> 
> Release Branch  - ebuilds that are the *current* release of gentoo
>                 - no changes (except critical security and bug fixes) to
>                   be made to this branch
> 
> My proposal to integrate this into the portage system and give users a 
> means of selecting which branch they wish to rsync against.
> 
> eg:
> root@gentoobox # GENTOOBRANCH="UNSTABLE" emerge rsync
> ... updating /usr/portage/unstable from cvs.gentoo.org/unstable
> 
> or
> 
> root@gentoobox # emerge rsync
> ... updating /usr/portage/release from cvs.gentoo.org
> 
> ie: emerge defaults to using the release branch.
> 
> It may mean a slightly larger /usr/portage for some users (particularly 
> devs), but I think it is needed to reduce the rash of -rX ebuilds that are 
> coming out as the developers _react_ to all the problems that are occuring.
> 
> This will also allow new users to install a version of gentoo that will 
> actually work first go.  Then as they get comfortable with the system they 
> can start to experiment, first with Stable ebuilds and then move on to 
> Unstable and become part of the development process.
> 
> Just my $0.02, either way I'm still going to continue to use gentoo, it is 
> by far the best way to learn about and use linux going.
> 
> -- 
>         Troy Dack
>         http://linuxserver.tkdack.com
> 
> "...Unix, MS-DOS, and Windows NT (also known as the Good, the Bad, and
> the Ugly)."  (By Matt Welsh)
> 
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