Re: [gentoo-dev] first council meeting

[Wernfried Haas <amne@gentoo.org>]

On Sat, Sep 17, 2005 at 04:17:10PM -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> i really want to get away from the idea of 'package.mask is for testing 
> packages' ... its current dual role as both masking 'testing' packages and 
> 'broken' packages is wrong imo
> 
> we dont want to try reeducating our users to not be afraid of package.mask 
> because a lot of things in there they *should* be afraid of

Coming from the user side (forums) i fully agree. Common sense among
the users always used to be:
arch: stable
~arch: testing
p.mask: broken

This is also covered in our current documentation, see
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/hb-portage-branches.xml
--snip--
The Testing Branch

If you want to use more recent software, you can consider using the
testing branch instead. To have Portage use the testing branch, add a
~ in front of your architecture.

The testing branch is exactly what it says - Testing. If a package is
in testing, it means that the developers feel that it is functional
but has not been thoroughly tested. You could very well be the first
to discover a bug in the package in which case you could file a
bugreport to let the developers know about it.

Beware though, you might notice stability issues, imperfect package
handling (for instance wrong/missing dependencies), too frequent
updates (resulting in lots of building) or broken packages. If you do
not know how Gentoo works and how to solve problems, we recommend that
you stick with the stable and tested branch. 
--snip--

Doesn't exactly sound like packages in ~arch should be ready to enter
arch after 30 days (and or the other QA requirements). If someone
wants to change that, that would be a major change to Gentoo,
especially as it affects _every_ user. So it would at least require a
GLEP to do that.
I'd rather like to finally see proper QA applied and those who don't
beaten with a stick than making fundamental changes to existing common
sense just because it is written down somewhere _that_ way.

cheers,
	Wernfried

-- 
Wernfried Haas (amne) - amne at gentoo dot org
Gentoo Forums: http://forums.gentoo.org
IRC: #gentoo-forums on freenode - email: forum-mods at gentoo dot org
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