Re: [gentoo-dev] Policy for late/slow stabilizations

[Ciaran McCreesh <ciaran.mccreesh@googlemail.com>]

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On Sun, 27 Jun 2010 20:22:33 +0300
Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > Which does Gentoo care about more: slightly increased convenience
> > for most developers, or considerably increased inconvenience for
> > users of minority archs?
> > 
> I don't follow you. Increased convenience just for the devs? How?

Not having to keep old versions around for a few archs is slightly more
convenient for most people.

Having to deal with dropped keywords is a huge inconvenience for users
on minority archs.

> All I want is to have packages stabled ~60 days after the initial
> commit on tree instead of ~5 months. If arches can't do that then I
> don't want to mark that obsolete package stable at all. Whats the
> point?

The point is for users of minor archs to have something that works.

> Also I would prefer to be able to drop ancient stable packages
> from the tree even if that means that there wont be any other stable
> version for this package to use. I 'd prefer a working tiny stable
> tree than a huge ancient one

The problem with that is that presumably some minority arch users are
using the packages you'd be dropping. When that happens, dropped
keywords are a considerable cost to them.

Which is the decision to make: make things very difficult for minority
arch users, who get screwed over royally every time keywords are
dropped, or make things slightly more inconvenient for developers, who
have to keep some things around for longer. It's all down to whether
you think happy users are more important than happy developers.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

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