Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Proposal for how to handle stable ebuilds

[Jeroen Roovers <jer@gentoo.org>]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:06:02 +0000 (UTC)
Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote:

> If it's a "production, critical, important" system, then what is one 
> doing installing updates on it directly without verifying them on a 
> generally identical test system first?

Now you're ridiculing the idea of having a "production/ critical/
important" system. Most of our users probably use a single Gentoo
machine (I see many cases where users have multiple machines, but only
one running Gentoo, or have one machine running several operating
systems), and for them an important system is one that they cannot
readily replace. Words like "production", "critical" and "important"
can be applied as easily to the state of a company's or nation's
system as to a single person's.

The stable branch has never been about commercial systems and their
stringent requirements[1] - it's all about this level of quality that
has users up in arms about one package blocking another or one package
requiring half the system to be rebuilt at a rate of no more than once a
year[2].


Kind regards,
     jer


[1] We've had calls for an über-stable project in the past that would
lock down versions and backport patches for enterprise systems.
[2] I.e. when we break the promise of [3].
]3] http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/philosophy.xml