On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 02:20:36PM +0000, Duncan wrote:
> Nikos Chantziaras posted on Wed, 11 May 2011 15:44:35 +0300 as excerpted:
> 
> > On 05/11/2011 03:32 PM, Tomáš Chvátal wrote:
> >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >> Hash: SHA1
> >>
> >> Dne 11.5.2011 13:05, Nikos Chantziaras napsal(a):
> >>> Why did the bump to Qt 4.7.3 happen?  AFAIK, it only contains Symbian
> >>> changes, and Gentoo does not run on the Symbian platform.
> >>>
> >>>
> >> With this approach you could ask why we bump each kde release.
> >>
> >> As most of the apps does not change at all.
> > 
> > I don't know :-P  Avoiding needless bumps was, IIRC, one of the reasons
> > Gentoo uses split ebuilds.  Anyway, I mentioned this because in the
> > past, at least one time, a version bump for Qt was omitted exactly
> > because there were no changes.
> 
> I have in fact wondered about just that.  Back when the kde split ebuilds 
> were being created, one of the big advantages was said to be that most kde 
> bumps didn't actually change anything for most apps, and we could keep the 
> same versions.  But recently I've seen comments from the kde folks saying 
> most don't, but we bump anyway, and I know everything does seem to be 
> bumped.
> 
> Is that simply because it's simpler to track everything at the same 
> version, instead of having kdelibs at 4.6.3 and kmail, for instance, still 
> at 4.6.0?  (That was in fact one of my worries with the initial thinking, 
> that it'd be difficult to know whether upstream had updated and gentoo/kde 
> had problems with it for gentoo and hadn't updated, or whether upstream 
> simply hadn't updated that package.  When the versions are all synced with 
> upstream regardless of changes, that's not an issue, even if it does mean 
> much more "useless" building.)
> 
> -- 
> Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
> "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
> and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman
> 
> 
To my perspective, split ebuilds ease the integration of patches. You can
patch a single ebuild and not have to rebuild everything else. But, when
it comes to version bumps, I think it is more safe to bump everything.
Do note that we apply patches more frequently than we do version bumps,
so it is definitely worth the pain of having split ebuilds.

Regards,
-- 
Markos Chandras / Gentoo Linux Developer / Key ID: B4AFF2C2