Re: [gentoo-dev] Stuff that makes people mad

[Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org>]

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On Fri, 2004-05-21 at 14:14, Christian Gut wrote:
> I to agree with both sides. But what about integrating an easy way to
> add custom rsync or perhaps ftp/http repositorys stackable to portage?
> like debian does it with apt. If there is a user maintaining ebuilds
> which can't get into the gentoo tree, he sets up his own tree and
> maintains them there. If others want that ebuilds, they add his tree to
> their .. make.conf.

An interesting idea, and one that has been proposed a dozen times
before.  Look below for reasons why it is a bad idea.

> Yes I know about overlay but i think of a more flexible way... the sites
> like breakmygentoo could maintain repositories with untested ebuilds and
> users are on their own testing/using them but it would perhaps help to
> grow people writing better ebuilds and wanting to becume gentoo devs.

Guess what happens when something goes wrong?  Do you know where the bug
report goes?  I sure do.  What if you use a BMG ebuild for GCC or glibc
and everything *seems* fine.  Then you build python with it.  Then you
even "upgrade" back to the "official" GCC/glibc.  Guess what?  Your
python is still compiled with the unofficial GCC and when you submit a
portage bug, it could very well be caused by the fact you were *at one
time* using an unofficial ebuild for GCC.  Don't think it can happen? 
Go look at bugzilla.

Once again, the general consensus from the people actually responsible
for maintaining Gentoo is that there's nothing wrong with "unofficial"
ebuilds of any kind, but *we* cannot be held responsible for what *you*
do to your system when running ebuilds *not* made/maintained by us.

Period.

There's absolutely nothing stopping you from coding up a "multiple tree"
version of portage and getting people to use it.  However, in the sake
of sanity and QA, there is no way that we could sanction it officially
without taking the quality of Gentoo as a whole down the toilet.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Developer
Games/LiveCD Teams
Gentoo Linux

Is your power animal a penguin?

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