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

[Jason Stubbs <jasonbstubbs@mailandnews.com>]

On Wednesday 08 October 2003 03:27, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> On Tuesday 07 October 2003 20:10, brett holcomb wrote:
> > What's wrong with the alpha beta being part of ~arch?  If
> > someone is working with alpha/beta stuff they know what
> > they're looking for?  I really don't see a need to have a
> > multi-tier mess to keep track of alpha/beta/gamma stuff.
> >  If it's arch it is stable and works.  If it's ~arch it
> > may be broken and break your system.  When the developer
> > deems it's okay it moves to arch.
>
> Not really, ~arch means that the package in itself is stable, and the
> developer thinks that the ebuild is also stable. Running ~arch should not
> mean that you get all kinds of beta quality stuff. It means that the
> installing of new packages might in some cases not go without a glitch.
> Some packages might not build without some extra "coersion", but once they
> are installed they should be stable. Unstable packages should be either not
> present or -arch masked or in package.mask. That is the policy as it
> exists.

I've been reading the discussion with keen interest as I'm a user that runs 
~x86. However, my belief when I chose to do so was not along policy lines. 
I've never read the policy and have only read the following excerpt from 
make.conf.

# Gentoo is using a new masking system to allow for easier stability testing
# on packages. KEYWORDS are used in ebuilds to mask and unmask packages based
# on the platform they are set for. A special form has been added that
# indicates packages and revisions that are expected to work, but have not yet
# been approved for the stable set. '~arch' is a superset of 'arch' which
# includes the unstable, in testing, packages.

Perhaps this text needs to be revised so users know exactly what they're 
getting into.

Regards,
Jason

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list