[gentoo-dev] Re: Please do not stabilize packages for arches you cannot test for

[Tom Payne <twp@gentoo.org>]

A pertinent discussion. I inadvertently broke the sparc tree by marking what
I thought was a architecture-independent script (net-www/raggle) as being
stable. The problem was that one of it's dependencies (dev-lang/ruby-1.8.0)
was still unstable on sparc. I thought repoman would find problems like this
but the version I have doesn't. Oops. Damage now undone and lesson learned.

But it seems to me that there is a simple fix that would easy the burden on
arch teams to test every single package for their arch. I advocate this only
for ebuilds unlikely to cause problems, e.g. scripts and documentation.


I propose:

An ebuild that is unlikely to cause problems can be MARKED stable on
relevant arches, even if the dev is unable to actually test it.

An ebuild is only CONSIDERED stable on an arch if it, and all its
dependencies, are marked stable on that arch.


Problems solved:

Arch leads no longer have to test every single ebuild that comes there way
-- non x86 arches get package updates quicker with reduced workload for arch
leads.

No need to write unit tests for packages to help arch leads (lots of work
and hard to do in some cases (e.g. interactive progs)).

Marking packages stable can no longer break dependencies.


New problems:

Might result in broken software being installed.


Feedback please. I advocate this approach for 'minor' packages, i.e. nothing
fundamental to the working of the system. It's more suitable for scripting
language libraries and minor applications (e.g. obscure window managers).

Regards,

Tom

P.S. I'm off skiing for a couple of weeks and so will only be able to lurk
on this discussion via gmane.org.

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