Re: [gentoo-dev] Three teir portage: stable, prestable, unstable?

[foser <foser@foser.dyn.warande.net>]

On Tue, 2003-10-07 at 00:08, Ian Leitch wrote:
> As I'm sure all devs know, ~arch is used for other things than just
> testing ebuilds.
> 
> "The purpose of ~arch is for testing new packages added to Portage. This
> is not the equivalent of "testing" of "unstable" in other
> distributions." - Development Policy

Well then that is a violation of policy. Developers who do this should
'change their ways'.

> Making these changes would sort out this little problem/mess whatever
> you want to call it. I also think the extra unstable branch would take
> some weight off package.mask, which could then be reserved for the need
> to mask a package for temporary licensing issues etc.. without removing
> it from portage. 

I think package.mask is indeed not the best solution for development
versions of packages, but neither do i think we should have an official
'unstable branch'. We have trouble enough to keep 'stable' stable and
up-to-date as it is, no need to add another official burden to it.

> Stable would also gradulay become more stable. We can't match Debian for
> stability but we could have the best of both worlds: up-to-date,
> reasonably stable software. This must be pretty attractive to those
> using Gentoo on the server and more importantly, those thinking about
> it. 

How would stable become more stable ? Stable should be stable as it is,
if it isn't because of development packages, then that is because
developers do not follow policy as it stands (or interpret it the wrong
way). That was put into place to ensure stability.

The only reason i see for adding an extra layer is for 'big' stuff that
needs serious testing : KDE/GNOME development series maybe, arch
additions to the tree (amd64 anyone), introduction of new eclasses, etc.
Those should be entered to the tree in some special protected
environment first, where they get proper testing (maybe by a selected
few) and then when reaching stability can be added to the tree with
relative ease (not one developer throwing in his local tree one night at
once).

- foser


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