From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5BADF1381F3 for ; Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:50:41 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 8C59DE09E4; Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:50:35 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (smtp.gentoo.org [140.211.166.183]) (using TLSv1 with cipher AECDH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 924B2E09B7 for ; Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:50:34 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost (unknown [81.219.205.176]) (using SSLv3 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) (Authenticated sender: mgorny) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id BA95833E3F1; Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:50:32 +0000 (UTC) Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 18:51:26 +0200 From: =?UTF-8?B?TWljaGHFgiBHw7Nybnk=?= To: Gentoo Developer Mailing List Subject: [gentoo-dev] Over-reliance of Gentoo projects on overlays Message-ID: <20130612185126.15f142b0@gentoo.org> Organization: Gentoo X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.9.1 (GTK+ 2.24.18; x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) 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: multipart/signed; micalg=PGP-SHA512; boundary="Sig_/p4WtAdU9aT0Aq+/qYBEZQQ_"; protocol="application/pgp-signature" X-Archives-Salt: 615543c1-82f1-4023-a2df-4b15133bd1af X-Archives-Hash: adcea2b6dbb65f4b0718588d52956de4 --Sig_/p4WtAdU9aT0Aq+/qYBEZQQ_ Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hello, I'd like to raise another issue I've met again recently. Shortly put, some of our projects are relying too much on their overlays. The net result is that some of their packages in the tree are not well-tested, semi-broken and users end up being hurt by that. The major project where this can be seen is science. With no offense intended, but I'm afraid that sometimes the team itself is losing track of what has been committed to the tree and what is in the overlay, and especially which versions are compatible. Another similar project having this problem seems to be lisp. From bug #465864 (which points to many other bugs not fixed in gx86), you can gather: "Anybody who intends to use something lisp-related (like maxima) in Gentoo seriously always uses this overlay. There are too few developers in the common-lisp herd, and the main tree remains neglected for years." (by Andrey Grozin) which shortly shows that in some areas the issues are really serious. Teams, what are the main reasons for keeping that much stuff in overlays? What can be done to avoid it? While I can see the benefits of, say, testing extraordinarily experimental stuff in overlays or keeping there stuff that is not intended to land in gx86 at all (like some custom hacks), I feel like just keeping the newer versions of some packages is more of issue breeder to us. Please remember that most of our users doesn't know those rules. If I am looking for a good mathematics package, I take maxima, though I have almost no idea of lisp except for parentheses. The lisp-related flags are confusing to me and ever worse is the fact that the default choice simply doesn't build. Then I try alternate implementations. Expecting users to grep bugzie or some other kind of pages to find that they are supported to install an overlay to properly use package that is in gx86 is not good. The sole existence and use of overlay is causing the gx86 package and/or its deps to be in increasingly worse shape. If the problem is really manpower, I think you should try to work with proxy-maint. If that's not enough, then we need to find a better solution. In the worst case, we may prefer to move some of the packages out of gx86 and specifically expect all users to use an overlay, consistently. But in this case, we should probably consider redesigning Gentoo to be based more on official or semi-official repositories like Exherbo so that all users would have equal rights. As a last note, I'd like to note that I'm talking about lisp that much because maxima is a recent case where I've seen this. But there were even worse things with science overlay, lapack and blas -- including getting the system into a state where neither gx86, nor science overlay packages work. --=20 Best regards, Micha=C5=82 G=C3=B3rny --Sig_/p4WtAdU9aT0Aq+/qYBEZQQ_ Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=signature.asc -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.20 (GNU/Linux) iQJ8BAEBCgBmBQJRuKcOXxSAAAAAAC4AKGlzc3Vlci1mcHJAbm90YXRpb25zLm9w ZW5wZ3AuZmlmdGhob3JzZW1hbi5uZXQ1RUJGMjBGOTk2RkIzQzIyQ0M2RkNBNDBC QUJGMUQ1RkY4QzgxMTBBAAoJELq/HV/4yBEKRB0P/0SFQeWzzZIWz9ys9swlgxqU 6yiPMkzDAO9XG173ZPzLk45JcdcU4T0KzarLgSokOyMINQDssvu/W+NKL2fqV5ww e+lSxNEZQKS5AitIuCjGHeBGx3IzEf6RkD1ivMJqJLu2jfH892VhlcbCiRf85BM0 +zyJKLakF3dMtn8WXlSyaeuHhMuNHR/CiPDf30/+KPp6zN2E1qnlD7b5SmN/XYnR 6Qj4/q4yWVxwl49QxRw/sDBC86ERlaNZ2G4hy1jCHYCmapLnBGdZeUgJFIP+/0nt /aSmMp4z95lNPEvtqzb6yvhcVKUjB/RWPHsEBBHKghX/budvnJNX9pYaOXMDCI85 E5lLuL5tOy2SwgDfv8uo02hL63Oz84qlygvrICZ/qDXRsEFPPTIyJRxhJYaJaV+k eUZAyzMbsYus5ZSrb3YwFKo86XJ0HKpeCI9UY4jJWJLHl2XKEEo70KuazNEbUfy9 VNirFvPIy58crb07oJtELfxngYnt+nzoT4u9xWHeYk6Fs8elp54OQFor0ieWG4Yg s3LXBp3ndYtaV5X401HKqFBiqKezLpWlsnbum2e2TE99q3JlubS3KOTWlT0fdl0o +Tp8irFYmNj8DTOGikcdTg3leLHokEDVU8JpoEplO4KkdfsYPfUi8gPQ+fhnsxHw EFJ7hhteZWrirU1cHWjk =wzEN -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --Sig_/p4WtAdU9aT0Aq+/qYBEZQQ_--