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

[Paul de Vrieze <pauldv@gentoo.org>]

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On Tuesday 07 October 2003 00:08, foser wrote:
> 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'.

Or change the policy

>
> 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.
>

I like the idea of adding this keyword. There are packages whose ebuilds are 
stable, and are reasonably stable, but still release candidates etc. 
Currently the status of such packages is unclear. Sometimes they are put into 
stable, sometimes they stay masked, and sometimes they are marked testing 
(which they should start out with, as then they are new).

Take for example the openoffice-1.1_rc? series. Those from rc3 onwards have 
been almost equal to the final release (what source is concerned, the build 
procedure was fixed). Current policy required them to be masked as they are 
unstable releases, while in fact being quite stable. We had various requests 
to remove them from the package.mask file. That, however, would be a 
violation of policy. An extra keyword could help in that respect.
>
> 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.
>
I think he means by not including development packages that come from upstream 
except in exception cases. I do think that even packages that would use the 
new keyword would need to follow the current stability policy. Another option 
could be just to add an extra keyword say "dev" that would be arch 
independent, but would signal the development package status of the upstream 
sources. This would need some portage changes as packages should then only be 
merged if this keyword is not specified unless the user makes changes to 
make.conf


> 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).
>

I think that is another discussion although I agree with it.

Paul

- -- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net
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