From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1MxsQa-0001BT-Ho for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:13:20 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id D42A4E081F; Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:13:13 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smtp-vbr19.xs4all.nl (smtp-vbr19.xs4all.nl [194.109.24.39]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 75ABBE081F for ; Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:13:13 +0000 (UTC) Received: from epia.jer-c2.orkz.net (atwork-106.r-212.178.112.atwork.nl [212.178.112.106]) (authenticated bits=0) by smtp-vbr19.xs4all.nl (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id n9E1DCP6061968 for ; Wed, 14 Oct 2009 03:13:12 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from jer@gentoo.org) Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 03:10:37 +0200 From: Jeroen Roovers To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] openrc-0.5.1 arrived in the tree Message-ID: <20091014031037.4a3b023b@epia.jer-c2.orkz.net> In-Reply-To: <20091014003335.GA20367@aerie.halcy0n.com> References: <200910091957.09193.zzam@gentoo.org> <4AD4E907.5060405@gentoo.org> <20091013163052.11d25cec@angelstorm> <200910132017.54281.vapier@gentoo.org> <20091014003335.GA20367@aerie.halcy0n.com> X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.7.2 (GTK+ 2.16.6; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: by XS4ALL Virus Scanner X-Archives-Salt: 65756ed4-0ad6-4779-8d83-c19206003a37 X-Archives-Hash: c441594d8bda9aa0c6d1b1350a7856f6 On Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:33:35 -0400 Mark Loeser wrote: > I'd say this isn't correct. Unstable isn't a pure testing playground. > its meant for packages that should be considered for stable. I happen to disagree. Since the advent of outside overlays and layman, we've seen many more bugs that only got discovered when the tree was synced with some developer overlay, or when a Great Unveiling was done after limited, private, small scale testing (as with many GNOME and KDE releases, not to point the finger). Keeping things out of the tree because they are "not ready for general consumption", or indeed masking versions "for testing", are good ways to ensure you get no widespread testing at all and find bugs at a late stage, worst case being during or after stabilisation. When the stable/testing mechanism works well, then all non-upstream bugs will be discovered before stabilisation, and some can even be fixed while stabilisation continues. Maintainers should know what versions never to request stabilisation for, otherwise users who expect things to more or less just work get exposed to buggy upstream releases. On the other hand, careful users should know to cherry-pick specific versions to unmask through package.unmask and package.keywords instead of using ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="arch ~arch" as a blanket measure to get the latest versions, otherwise they will regularly see data loss, misconfiguration, and programs that do not work at all, because: Testing means that you are prepared to find and deal with bugs that have not been fixed yet because they have not been found yet. I've been working on Gentoo for nearly 4 years now to hold up that vital distinction between testing (~hppa) and stable (hppa), and what you propose here has proven unworkable in that practice and as a general attitude is quite unusual. Regards, jer