On Saturday 08 November 2003 21:52, Corey Crawford wrote:
> O.K.,
>
> I'm a huge fan of ebuilds and the whole portage system.
>
> But: who decides what changes to make in these ebuilds? I'm really getting
> sick and tired of upgrading packages only to find that someone decided to
> change the ./configure options the ebuild uses.
>
> I shouldn't have to worry about my Apache server not working after an
> upgrade! This is the latest example:
>
> The '--with-suexec-docroot' configure option for the SuExec module in
> Apache2's ebuild to something other than all previous Apache2 ebuilds. This
> was done in apache-2.0.48-r1. _Why?_ This broke all of the CGI scripts on
> my virtual hosts until it was noticed and corrected the next day.
>
> I shouldn't have to go into every ebuild and make sure someone didn't
> change paths on me before doing (what is suppose to be) a simple upgrade.
>
> [/rant]
[blunt reply]
On a production system one should allways read changelogs before updating, and 
possibly even first test it. Also having binary packages to put back if 
things won't work is very useful.
[/blunt reply]

> Has anyone considered moving any 'configure' options to another file?

I don't think so. It would also be complicated because sometimes configure 
scripts themselves change defaults or other packages depend on certain 
configure options being present (which makes it not optional to not use the 
option).

> Moving the 'configure' options to another file would alleviate a lot of
> problems. This would allow those of us who have working systems to continue
> to have functioning systems even if the default values for those configure
> options have changed.

I understand your problems, I agree with it, however I see no way of solving 
the problem. The best guarantee for stability is not updating unless needed, 
and in that case be very careful (a diff between the old ebuild and the new 
one).

Paul

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