Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: rfc: revisiting our stabilization policy

[Steev Klimaszewski <steev@gentoo.org>]

On Sun, 2014-01-26 at 16:35 -0500, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 1:56 PM, Peter Stuge <peter@stuge.se> wrote:
> >
> > I don't think that's "completely optional" though, it sounds like a
> > one-way function. If have ever stabilized a package once then must
> > ensure a stable package forever.
> >
> > I think arbitrarily removing stable versions should also be an option,
> > and I think package managers would be able to deal with that without
> > much extra effort?
> 
> Well, I think we certainly should be able to de-stabilize packages.
> I've seen this happen in the past, especially when the need to not be
> stable is inherent in the package itself (such as game clients that
> need to be synchronized with servers - only one version will ever work
> at any time buggy or not).
> 
> Ideally this should really be the result of communication between the
> maintainer and arch team.  What we definitely don't want is a package
> that gets stabilized, and then six months later the whole package is
> back at ~arch, and then six months later there is a stable version
> again, and so on.  That just isn't, well, stable.
> 
> However, if an arch team is feeling overwhelmed I'd strongly encourage
> them to put out a bulletin telling maintainers to stop STABLEREQs for
> non-system packages, or whatever other guidance they want to issue.
> It has been pointed out that on these archs system packages often
> don't work, so having those be stable at least lets them target
> versions they want to fix up and lets users get a bootable system
> without too much fuss.  Falling back to a defensible position and all
> that...
> 

It's not necessarily the STABLEREQs stopping, some of the issues are (at
least on some arches!) that some of the unstable software doesn't quite
work properly anymore, and we are failing at communicating.  And in
those cases, we on the arch teams should definitely be pointing this
out, and filing bugs so that the issues can be sorted.

> But, nobody needs anybody's permission to do any of this.  Ideally the
> arch team should take the leadership to establish a policy on their
> arch which is maintainable.  If they don't do that, well, then
> maintainers complain and we get threads like this one.  The arch team
> has the greatest interest in having the arch work - I'd strongly
> support them in creating any policy for their arch that they can
> follow-through on.
> 
> Rich
>