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 1Mz46o-0000Qq-8o for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:53:50 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 88D0FE0872; Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:53:48 +0000 (UTC) Received: from dev.gentooexperimental.org (dev.gentooexperimental.org [81.93.240.53]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4C4E9E0872 for ; Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:53:48 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost.localnet (xdsl-87-79-151-62.netcologne.de [87.79.151.62]) by dev.gentooexperimental.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8181074CA5F for ; Sat, 17 Oct 2009 09:53:47 +0200 (CEST) From: Patrick Lauer To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] New ebuild metadata to mark how robust the package is? Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2009 09:53:39 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.12.90 (Linux/2.6.30-gentoo-r1; KDE/4.3.72; x86_64; ; ) References: <1255733421-30950-mlmmj-4f4db363@lists.gentoo.org> <7486f8688d881f8d4a987199cb9ec8ea.squirrel@core-mail.net> In-Reply-To: <7486f8688d881f8d4a987199cb9ec8ea.squirrel@core-mail.net> 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="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-Id: <200910170953.40078.patrick@gentoo.org> X-Archives-Salt: ec4a4456-612e-42a2-8169-39bc8da9b97b X-Archives-Hash: 1363584387632993955733be22054721 On Saturday 17 October 2009 01:29:00 Daniel Bradshaw wrote: > Some packages, like findutils, are pretty robust and generally just get on > with working. > Other packages, like apache and ssh, need are more fragile and need plenty > of configuration. That's almost completely user-side configuration outside the influence of=20 portage. emerge findutils and emerge apache "works" the same ... =20 > Packages from the second group want emerging on their own, or in small > groups, the better to keep an eye out for notices about things that might > break, to update configs, and to check that they're running happily. That's a very individual thing :)=20 Sometimes apache is a critical service, sometimes apache is just there as a= =20 fallback if/when the lighttpd+php+... stack breaks. > Once the update list is reduced to packages from the first group it's > fairly safe to run emerge -u world and not worry about things exploding > too badly. >=20 >=20 > So as I say, it occurs to me that most people probably follow some > variation of this selective upgrade method. > It might be handy to have some kind of metadata in the ebuilds that can be > used to indicate a package that is "demanding". There's one issue with that - library updates and compiler updates and all= =20 those other variations. I had a funky crashbug in amule for a while that, a= s=20 far as I can tell, is a mix of a confused crypto lib, wxGTK and amule itsel= f=20 not agreeing much. It disappeared with the last updates, and it would only= =20 trigger in this constellation. So what might work perfectly for most people could still violently explode = for=20 you. We already try to tag things with KEYWORDS - while that isn't the best= =20 indicator it gives you a general idea that ~arch is a bit less predictable= =20 than arch. And if it comes from an overlay you're on your own anyway. Why a= dd=20 just another level of labelling to that? =46rom my point of view that's just adding more noise instead of fixing the= =20 problem (package quality and interaction bugs). But that would take lots of= =20 time, lots of motivated people and will never stop :)