Re: [gentoo-dev] RDEPENDing on packages from overlays?

[Nathan Phillip Brink <ohnobinki@ohnopublishing.net>]

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On Sat, Apr 23, 2011 at 04:02:24AM -0700, Zac Medico wrote:
> On 04/22/2011 11:05 PM, Eray Aslan wrote:
> > https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364445
> > https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364401
> > 
> > Basically, there are requests to add packages to RDEPEND in virtual/mda
> > and virtual/mta that are not in the official tree but in sunrise.
> > 
> > On one side, *DEPENDing on a package outside the tree doesn't seem
> > right.  Additionally, keeping track of all the overlays and their
> > package versions, USE flags and flag changes are potentially too much to
> > track.  We will be making changes to a virtual package without testing
> > whether it works.
> 
> I would assume that it's the overlay maintainers' responsibility to test
> and report any problems. Any such problems would should affect the
> overlay users, so it shouldn't cause any regression for users who don't
> choose to use the overlay.
> 
> > On the other hand, we are making life (unneccesarily?) difficult for
> > overlay users by not incorporating the requested changes to the official
> > tree.
> 
> I don't imagine it's that much work to maintain a fork of the virtual.
> It's just an inconvenience for users since the version from the overlay
> might become temporarily outdated and cause problems with dependency
> resolution.

I would prefer that the virtual maintenance still happen in the main
tree whenever possible. In this case, the virtual's maintainer seems
willing to add the package atoms to the virtual -- the only concern
was whether or not it was allowed to *DEPEND on atoms known not to be
in gentoo-x86. So the answers I've read all add up to a "yes, go
ahead".

Encouraging overlays to maintain their own virtual replacements would
be encouraging more people who are not familiar with a particular
virtual to mess with it in their own repositories. Also, if multiple
overlays each need to add a single but different DEPEND to a
particular virtual, the user will end up with only one of these
virtual overrides. Someone who overrides a virtual in an overlay would
thus be expected to take into account other overlays which provide
candidates for that virtual. Having overlay maintainers do this would
be much more of a mess than letting one person manage the gentoo-x86
virtual and get everything done right once and without duplication of
effort.

-- 
binki

Look out for missing or extraneous apostrophes!

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