Re: [gentoo-dev] Proposal for how to handle stable ebuilds

[Ferris McCormick <fmccor@gentoo.org>]

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On Tue, 2008-11-11 at 11:18 +0100, Jose Luis Rivero wrote:
> Richard Freeman wrote:
> > Jose Luis Rivero wrote:
> >> I would prefer to analyze the causes of the slacker arch (manpower, 
> >> hardware, etc) and if we are not able to solve the problem by any way 
> >> (asking for new devs, buying hardware, etc) go for mark it as 
> >> experimental and drop all stable keywords.
> > 
> > How is that better?  Instead of dropping one stable package you'd end up 
> > dropping all of them.  A user could accept ~arch and get the same 
> > behavior without any need to mark every other package in the tree 
> > unstable.  
> 
> Accept ~arch for the random package which has lost the stable keyword a 
> random day? And next week .. which is going to be the next? The key is 
> the concept 'stable' and what you hope of it.
> 
> A long/middle-term solution for arches with very few resources instead 
> of generating problems to users seems a much better approach to me.
> 
> > An arch could put a note to that effect in their installation 
> > handbook.  The user could then choose between a very narrow core of 
> > stable packages or a wider universe of experimental ones.
> 
> Mixing software branches is very easy in the Gentoo world but it has 
> some problems. Are you going to install in your stable (production, 
> critial, important,...) system a combination of packages not tested 
> before? Because the arch teams or the maintainers are not going to test 
> every posible combination of core stable + universe of experimental 
> packages. This is why branches exists.
> 
> > I guess the question is whether package maintainers should be forced to 
> > maintain packages that are outdated by a significant period of time. 
> > Suppose something breaks a package that is 3 versions behind stable on 
> > all archs but one (where it is the current stable).  Should the package 
> > maintainer be required to fix it, rather than just delete it?  
> 
> Maintainer has done all he can do, this means: that is broken, this 
> version fix the problem, go for it. Maintainer's job finishes here, now 
>   it's the problem of your favorite arch team.
> 
> > I suspect 
> > that the maintainer would be more likely to just leave it broken, which 
> > doesn't exactly leave things better-off for the end users.
> 
> It's a different approach (maybe with the same bad results) but 
> different anyway. Leave the bug there, point the user to the bug and 
> maybe you can gain a new dev or an arch tester.
> 
> While the proposal made here is to throw random keyword problems to 
> users by policy (which in the case of amd64 some months ago would have 
> created a complete disaster).
> 
> > I'm sure the maintainers of qt/baselayout/coreutils/etc will exercise 
> > discretion on removing stable versions of these packages.  However, for 
> > some obscure utility that next-to-nobody uses, does it really hurt to 
> > move from stable back to unstable if the arch maintainers can't keep up?
> 
> Special cases and special plans are allowed, what we are discussing here 
> is a general and accepted policy.
> 
> > I guess it comes down to the driving issues.  How big a problem are 
> > stale packages (with the recent movement of a few platforms to 
> > experimental, is this an already-solved problem?)?  How big of a problem 
> > do arch teams see keeping up with 30-days as (or maybe 60/90)?  What are 
> > the practical (rather than theoretical) ramifications?
> 
> An interesting discussion. Ask our council to listen all parts: 
> maintainers, current arch teams, the experience of mips, etc. and try to 
> make a good choice.
> 
> Thanks Richard.
> 
> --
> Jose Luis Rivero <yoswink@gentoo.org>
> Gentoo/Alpha Gentoo/Do
> 

Very interesting discussion.  Let me take a more or less random post and
toss in a slight variation.  As you might know, I am an arch maintainer
(sparc) and I don't think we are a "slacker architecture."  However, I
have placed an indefinite hold on a stabalization request from the
bug-that-must-not-be-named, because in my opinion this package given the
current state of everything should not go stable on sparc (more QA
issues than functional ones).

How, I wonder, would the variations here handle such a situation?  I
don't think this situation is unique because arch developers are
sometimes going to have a different concept of "stable" than the package
developers do.

If this does not make sense, is off topic, or irrelevant feel free to
ignore it.

Regards,
Ferris
-- 
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@gentoo.org>
Developer, Gentoo Linux (Sparc, Userrel, Trustees)

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