Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: zlib breakage

[Brian Harring <ferringb@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Sep 24, 2011 at 02:58:02AM +0300, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> On 09/24/2011 02:40 AM, Alec Warner wrote:
> >> This was just another episode of Vapier's hostile and arrogant behavior
> >> towards users.  Every time someone comes up with a valid argument of why
> >> he's wrong, the final answer is "don't care, I do what I please because I'm
> >> the dev and you're not."  So my reply was the politest I could come up with
> >> without using the f-word.

The problem with your justification here is the statement "he's 
wrong"; that's opinion (and in this realm the dev frankly 9 times out 
of 10 is more experienced in the pkg in question thus their opinion 
carries greater weight).  Treating your opinion as justification to be 
an ass doesn't really fly, especially considering the stats I mention 
below.

> > I'm curious what you think the final answer should be?
> 
> Taking other people's input and concerns into account would be OK. 
> Knowing when you're wrong is a useful thing.  Right now, zlib does the 
> exact opposite of what should be done; Vapier changed zlib, and tries to 
> fix the packages that break because of that change.  The correct way to 
> handle it is to let zlib be, and fix the packages that stopped working 
> with zlib 1.2.5.1.
> 
> Why is that the correct way?  Because we don't know yet what upstream is 
> planning.  We don't know if they'll rename those macros.  If they won't, 
> then Gentoo is creating problems for itself.  Packages that won't build 
> out of the box on Gentoo's zlib will need to be patched.  And you can't 
> go to upstream of those packages with that patch, because it's none of 
> their business.  They know their code works against vanilla zlib, they 
> have no reason to change it.  If Gentoo decides to break a base library 
> by making it incompatible with the upstream version, it's their own fault.

"Incompatible with upstream version" ?

Quick bug count, 12 packages (most of which are doing bad things in 
their header usage) went boom.

13 out of *608* packages.  I reiterate, 6-!@#*ing-hundred-and-8.  If 
that 13 became 50 I'd be viewing this differently, but half the time 
core pkg upgrades break that /alone/ (meaning upstream induced 
breakage).

The packages are broken; while vapier is mildly ahead of the curve, 
updating upstream is going in parallel.

I strongly suspect you've got the unstated 13th, or hit some fallout 
thus why you're pushing on this as hard as you are.  While that sucks 
for you, you'd have hit the same breakage once upstream releases the 
API change.

All vapier is doing is frankly fixing the offending packages (which 
those patches then go upstream) so the upstream zlib change can be 
made w/out any fallout.

By and large, this is good open source behaviour, and fits with the 
gentoo "don't fuck with upstream's releases" philosophy (which is 
aimed at avoiding the sort of hellacious backporting/monkey-patching 
debian/fedora are known for).

Nothing to see here, pretty much.
~brian