[gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Markos Chandras]

Hi,

It's time of year again to consider moving a few arches to dev-only status.

I propose the following arches to lose their stable keywords

- s390
- sh
- ia64
- alpha
- m68k
- sparc

The manpower on these arches is below acceptable levels and they often
block stabilizations
for many months. This also causes troubles to developers trying to get
rid of old versions of
packages.

I am CC'ing Mike and  on this to draw his attention since he seems to
be doing stabilizations and
keywording on a few of them. Moreover, Agostino is also doing a lot of
work on these arches.
Consider what will happen if he ever goes MIA or decides to retire ;)
We will probably end up
with a pile of stabilization bugs like the good old days.

In my opinion, having these arches be ~arch only, will improve the
overall user experience
since the arch teams will only have to test a single tree. It will
also help developers get rid of
old ebuilds and keep the portage tree healthy and reasonably updated.

If I get enough positive feedback on this, I will propose this in the
next Council's agenda.

-- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras - Gentoo Linux Developer
http://dev.gentoo.org/~hwoarang

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Dirkjan Ochtman]

On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 1:04 PM, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
> I propose the following arches to lose their stable keywords
>
> - s390
> - sh
> - ia64
> - alpha
> - m68k
> - sparc

+many.

Cheers,

Dirkjan

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Ultrabug]

On 08/21/2013 01:04 PM, Markos Chandras wrote:
> Hi,
>
> It's time of year again to consider moving a few arches to dev-only status.
>
> I propose the following arches to lose their stable keywords
>
> - s390
> - sh
> - ia64
> - alpha
> - m68k
> - sparc
>
> The manpower on these arches is below acceptable levels and they often
> block stabilizations
> for many months. This also causes troubles to developers trying to get
> rid of old versions of
> packages.
>
> I am CC'ing Mike and  on this to draw his attention since he seems to
> be doing stabilizations and
> keywording on a few of them. Moreover, Agostino is also doing a lot of
> work on these arches.
> Consider what will happen if he ever goes MIA or decides to retire ;)
> We will probably end up
> with a pile of stabilization bugs like the good old days.
>
> In my opinion, having these arches be ~arch only, will improve the
> overall user experience
> since the arch teams will only have to test a single tree. It will
> also help developers get rid of
> old ebuilds and keep the portage tree healthy and reasonably updated.
>
> If I get enough positive feedback on this, I will propose this in the
> next Council's agenda.
>

+1

Even if I'm not directly concerned by those arches, I agree with your 
point and can see its benefits for both devs and users.

Cheers

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Tom Wijsman]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 881 bytes --]

On Wed, 21 Aug 2013 13:09:55 +0200
Dirkjan Ochtman <djc@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 1:04 PM, Markos Chandras
> <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > I propose the following arches to lose their stable keywords
> >
> > - s390
> > - sh
> > - ia64
> > - alpha
> > - m68k
> > - sparc
> 
> +many.

++many.

If any of these arches considers themselves to be a major arch; they
need to speak up and let us know if reasonable, but then we also need
to ensure that we draw more manpower to such major arch.

There's maybe one or so important in the server world; but as I don't
have a good enough clue about that, I'm not going to name any names.

-- 
With kind regards,

Tom Wijsman (TomWij)
Gentoo Developer

E-mail address  : TomWij@gentoo.org
GPG Public Key  : 6D34E57D
GPG Fingerprint : C165 AF18 AB4C 400B C3D2  ABF0 95B2 1FCD 6D34 E57D

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 490 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Pacho Ramos]

El mié, 21-08-2013 a las 12:04 +0100, Markos Chandras escribió:
[...]
> If I get enough positive feedback on this, I will propose this in the
> next Council's agenda.
> 

+ :)

[gentoo-dev] Re: Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Michael Palimaka]

On 21/08/2013 21:04, Markos Chandras wrote:
> I propose the following arches to lose their stable keywords
>
> - s390
> - sh
> - ia64
> - alpha
> - m68k
> - sparc

+1

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[heroxbd]

Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> writes:

> I propose the following arches to lose their stable keywords
>
> - s390
> - sh
> - ia64
> - alpha
> - m68k
> - sparc

I support this proposal.

I only have an old sparc box at hand. They are no longer major as time
goes, IMHO.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Mikle Kolyada]

21.08.2013 15:04, Markos Chandras пишет:
> Hi,
>
> It's time of year again to consider moving a few arches to dev-only status.
>
> I propose the following arches to lose their stable keywords
>
> - s390
> - sh
> - ia64
> - alpha
> - m68k
> - sparc

+1 for that. Perl herd has *really* many work with stabilization, it's
difficult because it's taking over a month in some cases.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Anthony G. Basile]

On 08/21/2013 07:04 AM, Markos Chandras wrote:
> Hi,
>
> It's time of year again to consider moving a few arches to dev-only status.
>
> I propose the following arches to lose their stable keywords
>
> - s390
> - sh
> - ia64
> - alpha
> - m68k
> - sparc
>

Mips, as you know, has been ~arch for a while and we've been doing just 
fine with it.

We can't pretend, however, that this doesn't shift some burden to the 
user.  One example is perl where some modules need 5.12.4 (the current 
stable) and cannot use 5.16.x (~arch).  On mips you might emerge 5.16.3 
only to hit a module later that insists on 5.12.4, thus requiring 
downgrading.  There are other examples where dependencies track stable 
but not unstable.  This is in addition to the usual breakage on the 
bleeding edge.

>
>
> If I get enough positive feedback on this, I will propose this in the
> next Council's agenda.
>
Or no serious negative feedback.  I don't think you will.  I can support 
this.

-- 
Anthony G. Basile, Ph.D.
Gentoo Linux Developer [Hardened]
E-Mail    : blueness@gentoo.org
GnuPG FP  : 1FED FAD9 D82C 52A5 3BAB  DC79 9384 FA6E F52D 4BBA
GnuPG ID  : F52D4BBA

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Markos Chandras]

>
> Mips, as you know, has been ~arch for a while and we've been doing just fine
> with it.
>
> We can't pretend, however, that this doesn't shift some burden to the user.
> One example is perl where some modules need 5.12.4 (the current stable) and
> cannot use 5.16.x (~arch).  On mips you might emerge 5.16.3 only to hit a
> module later that insists on 5.12.4, thus requiring downgrading.  There are
> other examples where dependencies track stable but not unstable.  This is in
> addition to the usual breakage on the bleeding edge.

There is a chance to be a bit off-topic here but I don't consider this
being a problem for two reasons.

First, mips profiles were marked 'experimental' so we missed a lot of
repoman functionality :)
Moreover, the problem you mentioned is a packaging issue which needs
to be fixed.
Having more people testing this as part of their regular testing can
only improve
the user experience in the end.
For such arches, my personal opinion is that most people have been running ~arch
all along because stable was lagging so far behind.

>>
> Or no serious negative feedback.  I don't think you will.  I can support
> this.

Thank you!

-- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras - Gentoo Linux Developer
http://dev.gentoo.org/~hwoarang

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Ben de Groot]

On 21 August 2013 19:04, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> It's time of year again to consider moving a few arches to dev-only status.
>
> I propose the following arches to lose their stable keywords
>
> - s390
> - sh
> - ia64
> - alpha
> - m68k
> - sparc
>

++

And consider adding ppc and ppc64 to that list.

-- 
Cheers,

Ben | yngwin
Gentoo developer

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Sergey Popov]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1687 bytes --]

21.08.2013 15:04, Markos Chandras пишет:
> Hi,
> 
> It's time of year again to consider moving a few arches to dev-only status.
> 
> I propose the following arches to lose their stable keywords
> 
> - s390
> - sh
> - ia64
> - alpha
> - m68k
> - sparc
> 
> The manpower on these arches is below acceptable levels and they often
> block stabilizations
> for many months. This also causes troubles to developers trying to get
> rid of old versions of
> packages.
> 
> I am CC'ing Mike and  on this to draw his attention since he seems to
> be doing stabilizations and
> keywording on a few of them. Moreover, Agostino is also doing a lot of
> work on these arches.
> Consider what will happen if he ever goes MIA or decides to retire ;)
> We will probably end up
> with a pile of stabilization bugs like the good old days.
> 
> In my opinion, having these arches be ~arch only, will improve the
> overall user experience
> since the arch teams will only have to test a single tree. It will
> also help developers get rid of
> old ebuilds and keep the portage tree healthy and reasonably updated.
> 
> If I get enough positive feedback on this, I will propose this in the
> next Council's agenda.
> 

+1 for that. Unless we have more manpower on them, their 'stable' state
can bring false expectations to users. Do not get me wrong, i am all for
choice, but if we can not bring quality stabilization on those arches(as
we have no hardware, no manpower, etc.) - they should go to unstable.

-- 
Best regards, Sergey Popov
Gentoo developer
Gentoo Desktop-effects project lead
Gentoo Qt project lead
Gentoo Proxy maintainers project lead


[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 555 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Matt Turner]

On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 4:04 AM, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> It's time of year again to consider moving a few arches to dev-only status.
>
> I propose the following arches to lose their stable keywords
>
> - s390
> - sh
> - ia64
> - alpha
> - m68k
> - sparc

I want some level between "stable and completely supported" and "loses
all its stable keywords.", at least for alpha.

Is switching their profiles to dev the way to do that?

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Mike Gilbert]

On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 11:32 AM, Matt Turner <mattst88@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 4:04 AM, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> It's time of year again to consider moving a few arches to dev-only status.
>>
>> I propose the following arches to lose their stable keywords
>>
>> - s390
>> - sh
>> - ia64
>> - alpha
>> - m68k
>> - sparc
>
> I want some level between "stable and completely supported" and "loses
> all its stable keywords.", at least for alpha.
>
> Is switching their profiles to dev the way to do that?
>

The proposal is to drop stable keywords on arches that cannot keep up.
Do you feel this is not the case on alpha?

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Markos Chandras]

On 21 August 2013 16:32, Matt Turner <mattst88@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 4:04 AM, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> It's time of year again to consider moving a few arches to dev-only status.
>>
>> I propose the following arches to lose their stable keywords
>>
>> - s390
>> - sh
>> - ia64
>> - alpha
>> - m68k
>> - sparc
>
> I want some level between "stable and completely supported" and "loses
> all its stable keywords.", at least for alpha.
>
> Is switching their profiles to dev the way to do that?
>

Is there an alternative? afaik a profile can be either stable,dev or
exp. I can't see how we can implement something between
stable and dev. And what would that represent? It may or may not be
stable? If this is the case, then I believe ~arch is more preferred.

-- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras - Gentoo Linux Developer
http://dev.gentoo.org/~hwoarang

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Michael Weber]

On 08/21/2013 01:04 PM, Markos Chandras wrote:
> The manpower on these arches is below acceptable levels and they often
> block stabilizations
> for many months. This also causes troubles to developers trying to get
> rid of old versions of
> packages.
> 
> I am CC'ing Mike and  on this to draw his attention since he seems to
> be doing stabilizations and
> keywording on a few of them. Moreover, Agostino is also doing a lot of
> work on these arches.
Maybe we should fix this situation (find more stabilization guys) rather
than the usual twice a year small arches bashing.

Imho the situation is that agos intensive work displaced all the other
ones, or they at least rely on ago doing the work and loose focus.


-- 
Michael Weber
Gentoo Developer
web: https://xmw.de/
mailto: Michael Weber <xmw@gentoo.org>

[gentoo-dev] Re: Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Michael Palimaka]

On 22/08/2013 01:56, Michael Weber wrote:
> On 08/21/2013 01:04 PM, Markos Chandras wrote:
>> The manpower on these arches is below acceptable levels and they often
>> block stabilizations
>> for many months. This also causes troubles to developers trying to get
>> rid of old versions of
>> packages.
>>
>> I am CC'ing Mike and  on this to draw his attention since he seems to
>> be doing stabilizations and
>> keywording on a few of them. Moreover, Agostino is also doing a lot of
>> work on these arches.
> Maybe we should fix this situation (find more stabilization guys) rather
> than the usual twice a year small arches bashing.
>
> Imho the situation is that agos intensive work displaced all the other
> ones, or they at least rely on ago doing the work and loose focus.
>
>
At one point before Ago came along, stabilisation of Qt was taking so 
long we had to start masking reverse dependencies for minor archs, so 
please don't blame Ago.

(Please note I am not trying to point the finger at anyone, just trying 
to highlight the severity of the problem.)

I have also been told that for some archs, new hardware is no longer 
available. That would make this not a question of if, but a question of 
when.

[gentoo-dev] Re: Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Michael Palimaka]

On 22/08/2013 01:32, Matt Turner wrote:
> I want some level between "stable and completely supported" and "loses
> all its stable keywords.", at least for alpha.
>
> Is switching their profiles to dev the way to do that?
What would you feel about instead of dropping stable completely, 
re-evaluating which packages are stable?

I have seen in the past minor archs dropping stable (and sometimes even 
keywords completely) for less core packages.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Alex Xu]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 490 bytes --]

On 21/08/13 12:23 PM, Michael Palimaka wrote:
>> Imho the situation is that agos intensive work displaced all the other
>> ones, or they at least rely on ago doing the work and loose focus.
>>
> At one point before Ago came along, stabilisation of Qt was taking so
> long we had to start masking reverse dependencies for minor archs, so
> please don't blame Ago.

I believe the point that xmw was trying to make was that ago is doing
*too good* of a job, not too poor of a job.


[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 836 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Matt Turner]

On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 8:40 AM, Mike Gilbert <floppym@gentoo.org> wrote:
> The proposal is to drop stable keywords on arches that cannot keep up.
> Do you feel this is not the case on alpha?

I'm not sure if that's my claim. I'm worried because I think it might
be a disaster for alpha (and perhaps other architectures).

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Matt Turner]

On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 8:50 AM, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Is there an alternative? afaik a profile can be either stable,dev or
> exp. I can't see how we can implement something between
> stable and dev. And what would that represent? It may or may not be
> stable? If this is the case, then I believe ~arch is more preferred.

I haven't read much into it, but Fedora has a concept of "Secondary
Architectures." I think it would make sense if we could keep stable
keywords for them, but not prevent maintainers from needing to wait on
them to stabilize other packages.

I've run into issues when I simply wanted to fix a mips-specific
problem and wound up spending inordinate amounts of time dealing with
general ~arch issues.

I'm worried that dropping stable keywords, while it'll make it seem
like the architectures are in better shape since there are fewer bugs,
will actually make using or developing them significantly worse.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Manuel Rüger]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

On 08/21/2013 05:56 PM, Michael Weber wrote:
> On 08/21/2013 01:04 PM, Markos Chandras wrote:
>> The manpower on these arches is below acceptable levels and they
>> often block stabilizations for many months. This also causes
>> troubles to developers trying to get rid of old versions of 
>> packages.
>> 
>> I am CC'ing Mike and  on this to draw his attention since he
>> seems to be doing stabilizations and keywording on a few of them.
>> Moreover, Agostino is also doing a lot of work on these arches.
> Maybe we should fix this situation (find more stabilization guys)
> rather than the usual twice a year small arches bashing.
> 
> Imho the situation is that agos intensive work displaced all the
> other ones, or they at least rely on ago doing the work and loose
> focus.
> 
> 


All in all, I'm in favor of dropping stable keywords for minor arches,
if it is possible to keep up with the same quality.

With regards to m68k armin76 blogged recently about an emulator[1].
Maybe if we don't want to drop stable keywords a "keywording and
stabilization timeout" [2] would be sufficient (i.e. every dev can add
a testing/stable keyword after testing it).


Do we keep any statistics about the user base of each arch? There was
a GSOC project called gentoostats [3], does anybody know anything
about its current status?


Kind regards

Manuel


[1]
http://armin762.wordpress.com/2013/08/07/gentoom68k-in-the-aranym-emulator/
[2] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=455872#c15
[3] http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Gentoostats
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.20 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/
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=Tumh
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Alexis Ballier]

Instead of dropping them entirely to ~arch, maybe something in between
could be done: Said arches could start moving to ~arch the leaf and
less important packages. E.g. we have (had?) a lot of sparc keywords on
sound packages or ppc keywords on ocaml ones because at some point
(~10 years ago) some dev was interested in these on this architecture
but I'm pretty sure nobody uses them.

In short: Reduce stable coverage to reduce the workload.

Also, from what I've seen in the thread, you are talking about keywords
only, right ? Do these arches keep their stable mark in profiles.desc?

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Markos Chandras]

On 21 August 2013 19:28, Alexis Ballier <aballier@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> Instead of dropping them entirely to ~arch, maybe something in between
> could be done: Said arches could start moving to ~arch the leaf and
> less important packages. E.g. we have (had?) a lot of sparc keywords on
> sound packages or ppc keywords on ocaml ones because at some point
> (~10 years ago) some dev was interested in these on this architecture
> but I'm pretty sure nobody uses them.
>
> In short: Reduce stable coverage to reduce the workload.
>
> Also, from what I've seen in the thread, you are talking about keywords
> only, right ? Do these arches keep their stable mark in profiles.desc?
>

I am not familiar with portage internals to understand what
implications will an ~arch only architecture have if marked as stable.
Is there a good reason for that?

-- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras - Gentoo Linux Developer
http://dev.gentoo.org/~hwoarang

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Alexis Ballier]

On Wed, 21 Aug 2013 20:03:30 +0100
Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On 21 August 2013 19:28, Alexis Ballier <aballier@gentoo.org> wrote:
> >
> > Instead of dropping them entirely to ~arch, maybe something in
> > between could be done: Said arches could start moving to ~arch the
> > leaf and less important packages. E.g. we have (had?) a lot of
> > sparc keywords on sound packages or ppc keywords on ocaml ones
> > because at some point (~10 years ago) some dev was interested in
> > these on this architecture but I'm pretty sure nobody uses them.
> >
> > In short: Reduce stable coverage to reduce the workload.
> >
> > Also, from what I've seen in the thread, you are talking about
> > keywords only, right ? Do these arches keep their stable mark in
> > profiles.desc?
> >
> 
> I am not familiar with portage internals to understand what
> implications will an ~arch only architecture have if marked as stable.
> Is there a good reason for that?

Oh yes: Forbid broken deptree.

x86-fbsd has always been dev profile + ~arch only. It is almost
impossible to move it to stable profile since people (almost) never run
'repoman -d' and even less file bugs when they introduce broken deps.
It is common to have portage bail out when updating your system because
someone introduced a broken dep and didnt pay attention.

amd64-fbsd is stable profile + ~arch only. People do it the correct
way, which is: drop keywords, file a bug. Since we do not have a huge
tree coverage here, I get about 5 such bugs a months, which are not hard
to handle.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Markos Chandras]

On 21 August 2013 20:10, Alexis Ballier <aballier@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Aug 2013 20:03:30 +0100
> Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
>> On 21 August 2013 19:28, Alexis Ballier <aballier@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> >
>> > Instead of dropping them entirely to ~arch, maybe something in
>> > between could be done: Said arches could start moving to ~arch the
>> > leaf and less important packages. E.g. we have (had?) a lot of
>> > sparc keywords on sound packages or ppc keywords on ocaml ones
>> > because at some point (~10 years ago) some dev was interested in
>> > these on this architecture but I'm pretty sure nobody uses them.
>> >
>> > In short: Reduce stable coverage to reduce the workload.
>> >
>> > Also, from what I've seen in the thread, you are talking about
>> > keywords only, right ? Do these arches keep their stable mark in
>> > profiles.desc?
>> >
>>
>> I am not familiar with portage internals to understand what
>> implications will an ~arch only architecture have if marked as stable.
>> Is there a good reason for that?
>
> Oh yes: Forbid broken deptree.
>
> x86-fbsd has always been dev profile + ~arch only. It is almost
> impossible to move it to stable profile since people (almost) never run
> 'repoman -d' and even less file bugs when they introduce broken deps.
> It is common to have portage bail out when updating your system because
> someone introduced a broken dep and didnt pay attention.
>
> amd64-fbsd is stable profile + ~arch only. People do it the correct
> way, which is: drop keywords, file a bug. Since we do not have a huge
> tree coverage here, I get about 5 such bugs a months, which are not hard
> to handle.
>

Ah, I have no strong preference then.

-- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras - Gentoo Linux Developer
http://dev.gentoo.org/~hwoarang

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Ben de Groot]

On 22 August 2013 01:19, Matt Turner <mattst88@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 8:50 AM, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> Is there an alternative? afaik a profile can be either stable,dev or
>> exp. I can't see how we can implement something between
>> stable and dev. And what would that represent? It may or may not be
>> stable? If this is the case, then I believe ~arch is more preferred.
>
> I haven't read much into it, but Fedora has a concept of "Secondary
> Architectures." I think it would make sense if we could keep stable
> keywords for them, but not prevent maintainers from needing to wait on
> them to stabilize other packages.

I don't see how that would work. You can't remove older versions
unless a newer one is stabilized, or you'd break the tree.

One option I see is to limit the amount of packages with stable
keywords to a select list, e.g. @system and closely related packages,
and refuse stable keywords for GUI toolkits and their desktop reverse
dependencies and the like.

Ago is doing a fantastic job, but it would be good to lower his
work-load and reduce the bus factor problem.

-- 
Cheers,

Ben | yngwin
Gentoo developer

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Sergey Popov]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1047 bytes --]

21.08.2013 22:28, Alexis Ballier пишет:
> 
> Instead of dropping them entirely to ~arch, maybe something in between
> could be done: Said arches could start moving to ~arch the leaf and
> less important packages. E.g. we have (had?) a lot of sparc keywords on
> sound packages or ppc keywords on ocaml ones because at some point
> (~10 years ago) some dev was interested in these on this architecture
> but I'm pretty sure nobody uses them.
> 
> In short: Reduce stable coverage to reduce the workload.
> 
> Also, from what I've seen in the thread, you are talking about keywords
> only, right ? Do these arches keep their stable mark in profiles.desc?
> 

I like this way much more. Let's clarify stabilization policy for some
minor arches, e.g. policy about stabilization requests for huge
packages. Cause dropping entire arch to ~arch maybe sometimes a bit
overkill.
-- 
Best regards, Sergey Popov
Gentoo developer
Gentoo Desktop Effects project lead
Gentoo Qt project lead
Gentoo Proxy maintainers project lead


[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 555 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Michael Weber]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

On 08/22/2013 08:38 AM, Sergey Popov wrote:
> 21.08.2013 22:28, Alexis Ballier пишет:
>> 
>> Instead of dropping them entirely to ~arch, maybe something in
>> between could be done: Said arches could start moving to ~arch
>> the leaf and less important packages. E.g. we have (had?) a lot
>> of sparc keywords on sound packages or ppc keywords on ocaml ones
>> because at some point (~10 years ago) some dev was interested in
>> these on this architecture but I'm pretty sure nobody uses them.
>> 
>> In short: Reduce stable coverage to reduce the workload.
>> 
>> Also, from what I've seen in the thread, you are talking about
>> keywords only, right ? Do these arches keep their stable mark in
>> profiles.desc?
>> 
> 
> I like this way much more. Let's clarify stabilization policy for
> some minor arches, e.g. policy about stabilization requests for
> huge packages. Cause dropping entire arch to ~arch maybe sometimes
> a bit overkill.

And hard to revert. Sparc did drop a lot of keywords lately, by removing
itself from STABLEREQ w/o stabling the mentioned package.


- -- 
Michael Weber
Gentoo Developer
web: https://xmw.de/
mailto: Michael Weber <xmw@gentoo.org>
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.20 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/

iF4EAREIAAYFAlIVt8cACgkQknrdDGLu8JCfxgD/X6HlUv7pPFuo75aOhs1bT9Cc
PqF799Z9yYsPX+042yoA/RZ2xwKaNUEIlL6XbOKpC0SivlMFIHxBxlzYeRACcPJU
=yu+s
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 1:39 AM, Ben de Groot <yngwin@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On 22 August 2013 01:19, Matt Turner <mattst88@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 8:50 AM, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> Is there an alternative? afaik a profile can be either stable,dev or
>>> exp. I can't see how we can implement something between
>>> stable and dev. And what would that represent? It may or may not be
>>> stable? If this is the case, then I believe ~arch is more preferred.
>>
>> I haven't read much into it, but Fedora has a concept of "Secondary
>> Architectures." I think it would make sense if we could keep stable
>> keywords for them, but not prevent maintainers from needing to wait on
>> them to stabilize other packages.
>
> I don't see how that would work. You can't remove older versions
> unless a newer one is stabilized, or you'd break the tree.

Sort-of.  You'd break it in that users would have to accept ~arch to
keep that package, or remove it.  It is really no different than
dropping stable keywords which forces them to do the same thing,
except that you're doing it one package at a time.

You could impose a time limit to respond to the STABLEREQ prior to
removal (30-60 days or something).

I think the result of a policy like this would be that stable keywords
would get dropped on most peripheral packages, but system packages
might still keep them.  That might actually be the right balance - if
the arch teams focus on just system or other important packages they
might be able to find the time to keep up rather than trying to boil
the ocean.

Rich

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Markos Chandras]

On 22 August 2013 11:01, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 1:39 AM, Ben de Groot <yngwin@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> On 22 August 2013 01:19, Matt Turner <mattst88@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 8:50 AM, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>> Is there an alternative? afaik a profile can be either stable,dev or
>>>> exp. I can't see how we can implement something between
>>>> stable and dev. And what would that represent? It may or may not be
>>>> stable? If this is the case, then I believe ~arch is more preferred.
>>>
>>> I haven't read much into it, but Fedora has a concept of "Secondary
>>> Architectures." I think it would make sense if we could keep stable
>>> keywords for them, but not prevent maintainers from needing to wait on
>>> them to stabilize other packages.
>>
>> I don't see how that would work. You can't remove older versions
>> unless a newer one is stabilized, or you'd break the tree.
>
> Sort-of.  You'd break it in that users would have to accept ~arch to
> keep that package, or remove it.  It is really no different than
> dropping stable keywords which forces them to do the same thing,
> except that you're doing it one package at a time.
>
> You could impose a time limit to respond to the STABLEREQ prior to
> removal (30-60 days or something).
>
> I think the result of a policy like this would be that stable keywords
> would get dropped on most peripheral packages, but system packages
> might still keep them.  That might actually be the right balance - if
> the arch teams focus on just system or other important packages they
> might be able to find the time to keep up rather than trying to boil
> the ocean.
>
> Rich
>

What's the point of that? Most users need more than what @system
provides so after they deploy the 'stable' stage3 they will
start pulling ~arch packages that were never tested against the stable
tree. It so much better if stage3 was also ~arch.

-- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras - Gentoo Linux Developer
http://dev.gentoo.org/~hwoarang

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Ben de Groot]

On 22 August 2013 18:01, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 1:39 AM, Ben de Groot <yngwin@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> On 22 August 2013 01:19, Matt Turner <mattst88@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 8:50 AM, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>> Is there an alternative? afaik a profile can be either stable,dev or
>>>> exp. I can't see how we can implement something between
>>>> stable and dev. And what would that represent? It may or may not be
>>>> stable? If this is the case, then I believe ~arch is more preferred.
>>>
>>> I haven't read much into it, but Fedora has a concept of "Secondary
>>> Architectures." I think it would make sense if we could keep stable
>>> keywords for them, but not prevent maintainers from needing to wait on
>>> them to stabilize other packages.
>>
>> I don't see how that would work. You can't remove older versions
>> unless a newer one is stabilized, or you'd break the tree.
>
> Sort-of.  You'd break it in that users would have to accept ~arch to
> keep that package, or remove it.  It is really no different than
> dropping stable keywords which forces them to do the same thing,
> except that you're doing it one package at a time.
>
> You could impose a time limit to respond to the STABLEREQ prior to
> removal (30-60 days or something).

The problem is with reverse dependencies. We had this a while ago with
Qt libraries, and I ended up needing to mask a whole list of packages
on two slacker arches. That's more trouble than it's worth for me.

In my opinion we should only bother with stabilization on the most
widely used arches: amd64, x86, and arm.

-- 
Cheers,

Ben | yngwin
Gentoo developer

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 6:19 AM, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On 22 August 2013 11:01, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> I think the result of a policy like this would be that stable keywords
>> would get dropped on most peripheral packages, but system packages
>> might still keep them.
>
> What's the point of that? Most users need more than what @system
> provides so after they deploy the 'stable' stage3 they will
> start pulling ~arch packages that were never tested against the stable
> tree. It so much better if stage3 was also ~arch.

Do we actually have examples of this happening?  I've never had
problems with a mix of stable and ~arch keywords.  Granted, I'm not
running ~arch on most libs.

I've seen lots of talk about stable being less reliable than ~arch,
and ~arch applications on a stable core being unreliable, but I've
never actually seen any real evidence that either is true.  Granted,
I'm not necessarily expecting a scientific study, but I haven't even
heard anecdotes.  I can't offer much personally - I only really use
stable to any extent and I find it works just fine other than the
occasional need to unmask something.

Rich

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Markos Chandras]

On 22 August 2013 12:24, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 6:19 AM, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> On 22 August 2013 11:01, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> I think the result of a policy like this would be that stable keywords
>>> would get dropped on most peripheral packages, but system packages
>>> might still keep them.
>>
>> What's the point of that? Most users need more than what @system
>> provides so after they deploy the 'stable' stage3 they will
>> start pulling ~arch packages that were never tested against the stable
>> tree. It so much better if stage3 was also ~arch.
>
> Do we actually have examples of this happening?  I've never had
> problems with a mix of stable and ~arch keywords.  Granted, I'm not
> running ~arch on most libs.

Wow! That is something we actively encourage people to avoid. Mixed
systems are totally
unsupported and I am sure quite a few bugs are closed as invalid when
a mixed system is detected.

It may work on regular basis but encouraging and supporting such
configurations is definitely not desirable.

It's also a bit ehm, funny, to give them a stable stage3 and then tell
them that for everything else, please use ~arch.

-- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras - Gentoo Linux Developer
http://dev.gentoo.org/~hwoarang

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Michael Weber]

On 08/22/2013 01:28 PM, Markos Chandras wrote:
> On 22 August 2013 12:24, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 6:19 AM, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> On 22 August 2013 11:01, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>> I think the result of a policy like this would be that stable keywords
>>>> would get dropped on most peripheral packages, but system packages
>>>> might still keep them.
>>>
>>> What's the point of that? Most users need more than what @system
>>> provides so after they deploy the 'stable' stage3 they will
>>> start pulling ~arch packages that were never tested against the stable
>>> tree. It so much better if stage3 was also ~arch.
>>
>> Do we actually have examples of this happening?  I've never had
>> problems with a mix of stable and ~arch keywords.  Granted, I'm not
>> running ~arch on most libs.
> 
> Wow! That is something we actively encourage people to avoid. Mixed
> systems are totally
> unsupported and I am sure quite a few bugs are closed as invalid when
> a mixed system is detected.
> 
> It may work on regular basis but encouraging and supporting such
> configurations is definitely not desirable.
Actually this what Gentoo is all about - for me. Having the option of a
well tested stable system and just bleeding edge where wanted
(i have ~10% of my packages from arch and it works like a charm, and
like only one bug report of mine was closed due an mixed arch issue).

Having a mixed setup isn't that absurd as you want it to be.
And forcing users to not use it renders all package.{accepted_,}keywords
granularity moot.

It's like nailing them to debian stable or debian testing w/o backports
or anything.

Please stop dooming this possibility. Mixing together software versions
isn't that much of a magic as you make of it.

> It's also a bit ehm, funny, to give them a stable stage3 and then tell
> them that for everything else, please use ~arch.

(I'm not saying that it doesn't hurt in some places, but it's
manageable, as is living on arches with stable core and very few stable
leave packages, like I've been doing on sparc, ppc and arm.)

-- 
Michael Weber
Gentoo Developer
web: https://xmw.de/
mailto: Michael Weber <xmw@gentoo.org>

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Markos Chandras]

On 22 August 2013 13:17, Michael Weber <xmw@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> Having a mixed setup isn't that absurd as you want it to be.
> And forcing users to not use it renders all package.{accepted_,}keywords
> granularity moot.
>
> It's like nailing them to debian stable or debian testing w/o backports
> or anything.
>
> Please stop dooming this possibility. Mixing together software versions
> isn't that much of a magic as you make of it.

I said that it is a combination not well tested so we do not encourage
this. Users are free to do whatever they want.

When did I say the opposite? However they should not expect much
support if they use a mixed system and they run into
troubles. Someone who does that, should know what he is doing and be
prepared to run into problems.
And I will stop here because this discussion is off-topic.

>
>> It's also a bit ehm, funny, to give them a stable stage3 and then tell
>> them that for everything else, please use ~arch.
>
> (I'm not saying that it doesn't hurt in some places, but it's
> manageable, as is living on arches with stable core and very few stable
> leave packages, like I've been doing on sparc, ppc and arm.)
>
This is yet to be decided.

-- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras - Gentoo Linux Developer
http://dev.gentoo.org/~hwoarang

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Sergey Popov]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1707 bytes --]

22.08.2013 16:26, Markos Chandras пишет:
> On 22 August 2013 13:17, Michael Weber <xmw@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>
>> Having a mixed setup isn't that absurd as you want it to be.
>> And forcing users to not use it renders all package.{accepted_,}keywords
>> granularity moot.
>>
>> It's like nailing them to debian stable or debian testing w/o backports
>> or anything.
>>
>> Please stop dooming this possibility. Mixing together software versions
>> isn't that much of a magic as you make of it.
> 
> I said that it is a combination not well tested so we do not encourage
> this. Users are free to do whatever they want.
> 
> When did I say the opposite? However they should not expect much
> support if they use a mixed system and they run into
> troubles. Someone who does that, should know what he is doing and be
> prepared to run into problems.
> And I will stop here because this discussion is off-topic.
> 
>>
>>> It's also a bit ehm, funny, to give them a stable stage3 and then tell
>>> them that for everything else, please use ~arch.
>>
>> (I'm not saying that it doesn't hurt in some places, but it's
>> manageable, as is living on arches with stable core and very few stable
>> leave packages, like I've been doing on sparc, ppc and arm.)
>>
> This is yet to be decided.
> 
I have mixed setup for years:

pinkbyte@oas1 ~ $ ls /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/ -1 | wc -l
19

At home this number is above 40, iirc.

And i do not think that refusing bugreports from such systems is a
proper way.

-- 
Best regards, Sergey Popov
Gentoo developer
Gentoo Desktop Effects project lead
Gentoo Qt project lead
Gentoo Proxy maintainers project lead


[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 555 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Michael Weber]

On 08/22/2013 02:26 PM, Markos Chandras wrote:
> On 22 August 2013 13:17, Michael Weber <xmw@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>
>> Having a mixed setup isn't that absurd as you want it to be.
>> And forcing users to not use it renders all package.{accepted_,}keywords
>> granularity moot.
>>
>> It's like nailing them to debian stable or debian testing w/o backports
>> or anything.
>>
>> Please stop dooming this possibility. Mixing together software versions
>> isn't that much of a magic as you make of it.
> 
> I said that it is a combination not well tested so we do not encourage
> this. Users are free to do whatever they want.
Actually every other post is about keywording special versions or
running --autounmask-write. I'm saying that "we do not encourage this"
might not be the reality on forums/blogs/channels.

> When did I say the opposite? However they should not expect much
> support if they use a mixed system and they run into
> troubles. Someone who does that, should know what he is doing and be
> prepared to run into problems.
> And I will stop here because this discussion is off-topic.
> 
>>
>>> It's also a bit ehm, funny, to give them a stable stage3 and then tell
>>> them that for everything else, please use ~arch.
>>
>> (I'm not saying that it doesn't hurt in some places, but it's
>> manageable, as is living on arches with stable core and very few stable
>> leave packages, like I've been doing on sparc, ppc and arm.)
>>
> This is yet to be decided.
This is the established road that leads to user supplied KEYWORDREQ and
STABLEREQ bugs. And reality for sparc/ppc/arm, which lacks stable
keywords on lots of packages.

Imho, x86 should be added to the list too.

<troll>Which environmental responsible persons runs these CPUs these
days.</troll>

-- 
Michael Weber
Gentoo Developer
web: https://xmw.de/
mailto: Michael Weber <xmw@gentoo.org>

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Ian Stakenvicius]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

On 22/08/13 06:19 AM, Markos Chandras wrote:
> What's the point of that? Most users need more than what @system 
> provides so after they deploy the 'stable' stage3 they will start
> pulling ~arch packages that were never tested against the stable 
> tree. It so much better if stage3 was also ~arch.
> 

Actually this brings up a good point in general -- we have enough
problems auto-rolling stable stage3's half the time, is it likely that
we'll be able to roll ~arch stage3's for these minor arches on a
regular basis if we *DO* drop all stable keywords from them??


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.20 (GNU/Linux)

iF4EAREIAAYFAlIWDzUACgkQ2ugaI38ACPBnXgD+OYOf0ygaaR8YnCUWZmTre07p
43NJKsUpkuWJrPTxMRcBAI4tqZRYbsyLV/W9YmuqC7As3MZRLI8X58KlGLUtI5Oa
=epp1
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Tom Wijsman]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1587 bytes --]

On Thu, 22 Aug 2013 14:47:18 +0200
Michael Weber <xmw@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On 08/22/2013 02:26 PM, Markos Chandras wrote:
> > I said that it is a combination not well tested so we do not
> > encourage this. Users are free to do whatever they want.
> Actually every other post is about keywording special versions or
> running --autounmask-write. I'm saying that "we do not encourage this"
> might not be the reality on forums/blogs/channels.

This might be a possible language barrier; please note that "we do not
encourage this" can be interpreted as "we encourage that you do not do
this" but also as "we have no encouragement for this", whether it
implies that we do or do not advice a choice depends on the context.

Regardless, lots of people encourage others to not mix their system or
use --autounmask-write in a careless way; in other words, they encourage
them to only use it if they must and to be careful in how they do this.

That's at least the impression that I get from our support places; in
my personal opinion, I think that is the way it should be used.

The goal should be for the file to be a sane solution for the user that
needs it; it shouldn't become a file that is filled with all kinds of
suggestions Portage can throw at you, some just aren't sane to do.

Every other post shouldn't be the goal, it should be the exception...

-- 
With kind regards,

Tom Wijsman (TomWij)
Gentoo Developer

E-mail address  : TomWij@gentoo.org
GPG Public Key  : 6D34E57D
GPG Fingerprint : C165 AF18 AB4C 400B C3D2  ABF0 95B2 1FCD 6D34 E57D

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 490 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 7:28 AM, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On 22 August 2013 12:24, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:

>> Do we actually have examples of this happening?  I've never had
>> problems with a mix of stable and ~arch keywords.  Granted, I'm not
>> running ~arch on most libs.
>
> Wow! That is something we actively encourage people to avoid. Mixed
> systems are totally
> unsupported and I am sure quite a few bugs are closed as invalid when
> a mixed system is detected.

So, this is what I was talking about - people say this but it really
hasn't been borne out in reality as far as I can tell.  I can
certainly say that maintainers handle bugs from mixed systems all the
time, if for no other reason than it is pretty hard to tell that a
mixed system is in use.

When bugs do crop up on mixed systems they're often the result of
dependency errors - ones that are obscured by the fact that the
package has only been tested on a ~arch system.

The more subtle issue is if a stable package has an unstated
<cat/foo-ver dep and pulling in foo breaks some other stable package.
Those really are still valid bugs, though it may not be so easily
fixed except in the short term (unless slotted a <version dep is hard
to support).  I've gotten caught by these on a few of my own packages,
since I only testing them on ~arch very lightly (since I don't run
~arch in general) - when it happens the deps get fixed and things are
just that much better off when they get to stable (and if ~arch breaks
on rare occasion that is what it is for).

I see the ability to run a mixed system as one of the big benefits of
using Gentoo - few distros support this nearly as well.  As far as it
being unsupported on Gentoo goes - that all depends on your definition
of "support."  We don't do a lot of handholding for ANY of our users.

Rich

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Andreas K. Huettel]

Am Donnerstag, 22. August 2013, 13:28:24 schrieb Markos Chandras:
> > 
> > Do we actually have examples of this happening?  I've never had
> > problems with a mix of stable and ~arch keywords.  Granted, I'm not
> > running ~arch on most libs.
> 
> Wow! That is something we actively encourage people to avoid. Mixed
> systems are totally
> unsupported and I am sure quite a few bugs are closed as invalid when
> a mixed system is detected.
> 

Markos, 

outdated information. I'd consider that standard and recommended procedure. 
Whoever closes bugs with "combining stable and testing is unsupported" needs a 
good kick
.
Cheers, A

-- 
Andreas K. Huettel
Gentoo Linux developer (council, kde)
dilfridge@gentoo.org
http://www.akhuettel.de/

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[William Hubbs]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1706 bytes --]

On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 09:03:35AM +0200, Michael Weber wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
> 
> On 08/22/2013 08:38 AM, Sergey Popov wrote:
> > 21.08.2013 22:28, Alexis Ballier пишет:
> >> 
> >> Instead of dropping them entirely to ~arch, maybe something in
> >> between could be done: Said arches could start moving to ~arch
> >> the leaf and less important packages. E.g. we have (had?) a lot
> >> of sparc keywords on sound packages or ppc keywords on ocaml ones
> >> because at some point (~10 years ago) some dev was interested in
> >> these on this architecture but I'm pretty sure nobody uses them.
> >> 
> >> In short: Reduce stable coverage to reduce the workload.
> >> 
> >> Also, from what I've seen in the thread, you are talking about
> >> keywords only, right ? Do these arches keep their stable mark in
> >> profiles.desc?
> >> 
> > 
> > I like this way much more. Let's clarify stabilization policy for
> > some minor arches, e.g. policy about stabilization requests for
> > huge packages. Cause dropping entire arch to ~arch maybe sometimes
> > a bit overkill.
> 
> And hard to revert. Sparc did drop a lot of keywords lately, by removing
> itself from STABLEREQ w/o stabling the mentioned package.

Give maintainers some ability to take some action as well. Say I
maintain package foo, and there is an old version that is stable on a
minor arch. Say a stabilization request for a newer version has been
opened for a while (30-60 days is probably sufficient) and the arch team
hasn't responded. I want a path that would allow me to remove the older
version of foo from the tree and close out the stable request.

William


[-- Attachment #2: Digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Jack Morgan]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1421 bytes --]

On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 01:30:59PM +0200, Tom Wijsman wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Aug 2013 13:09:55 +0200
> Dirkjan Ochtman <djc@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 1:04 PM, Markos Chandras
> > <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > > I propose the following arches to lose their stable keywords
> > >
> > > - s390
> > > - sh
> > > - ia64
> > > - alpha
> > > - m68k
> > > - sparc
> > 
> > +many.
> 
> ++many.
> 
> If any of these arches considers themselves to be a major arch; they
> need to speak up and let us know if reasonable, but then we also need
> to ensure that we draw more manpower to such major arch.
 
I think we are looking at this problem the wrong way. Why not define
what is needed to be a major arch and a minor arch (~arch only). Then
drop a marjor arch to a minor arch if they don't meet the requirement. 

For example, we could define a major as having an arch lead, 3 active devs 
(commited to the cvs tree in the last xyz number of days), etc

I've been trying to get more involved with ia64, sparc, ppc, ppc64 so my
vote is to keep those arch as a major arch. I'd be willing to help out
ago mark ebuilds stable but as others have pointed out he does such a good
job, its hard to compete with him ;)


Cheers,

-- 
Jack Morgan
Pub 4096R/761D8E0A 2010-09-13 Jack Morgan <jmorgan@gentoo.org>>
Fingerprint = DD42 EA48 D701 D520 C2CD 55BE BF53 C69B 761D 8E0A

[-- Attachment #2: Digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 836 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Christopher Head]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1577 bytes --]

On Thu, 22 Aug 2013 12:28:24 +0100
Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Wow! That is something we actively encourage people to avoid. Mixed
> systems are totally
> unsupported and I am sure quite a few bugs are closed as invalid when
> a mixed system is detected.
> 
> It may work on regular basis but encouraging and supporting such
> configurations is definitely not desirable.
> 
> It's also a bit ehm, funny, to give them a stable stage3 and then tell
> them that for everything else, please use ~arch.

Really? So you’re telling me that if I want Drupal on my Web server,
which if it breaks then takes a few minutes to revert to the previous
version and has virtually zero chance of taking anything else down
with it, then it’s “definitely not desirable…to encourage” me to use
mixed keywords—instead I should be using ~arch versions of, say, glibc,
iproute2, openssh, openrc, and the kernel, every single one of which,
should it break, would be fixable only with a bus ride across the city,
access to a locked room, wiring up a keyboard and monitor, and possibly
booting from a live disk?

There’s breakage of one package, and then there’s breakage of the
*system*. Running mixed versions may increase the chance of breakage of
the particular package that’s ~arch as compared to running a full ~arch
system, but as long as that package isn’t part of or needed by the
system boot process, I can’t see how mixed versions could do anything
but decrease the chance of breakage of the system as a whole.

Chris

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 230 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Jeroen Roovers]

On Thu, 22 Aug 2013 12:28:24 +0100
Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Wow! That is something we actively encourage people to avoid. Mixed
> systems are totally
> unsupported and I am sure quite a few bugs are closed as invalid when
> a mixed system is detected.

Mixing stable and testing is precisely what arch teams (hopefully) do in
testing and stabilising: building and running new software on a known
to be stable platform in order to merge the new software into the
stable branch (or not).

Mixing stable and testing is precisely what package
maintainers (hopefully) do when committing new versions: building and
running new software on a known to be stable platform on the premise
that the new software is likely to be merged into the stable branch
(before the platform changes too much).

Mixing stable and testing is what triggers users to file useful
bug reports about incompatibilities between new software and stable
(reverse) dependencies.

Cases where reporting bugs about mixing stable and testing is (likely)
invalid is when unmasking one package in the unstable branch causes
(reverse) dependency resolution issues with another package in the
stable branch (since users should know how to resolve those - there is
generally no bug for maintainers to fix).

There is a lot more to it than this, of course. I'm just pointing out
some of the obvious scenarios in which mixing stable and testing should
be encouraged.


     jer

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn]

Jeroen Roovers schrieb:
> Mixing stable and testing is precisely what package
> maintainers (hopefully) do when committing new versions: building and
> running new software on a known to be stable platform on the premise
> that the new software is likely to be merged into the stable branch
> (before the platform changes too much).

At least for x11 maintained packages, we don't support mixing of stable and
unstable parts of X in the way that you suggest.

We don't mind however whether the rest of the system is stable or not.


Best regards,
Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Rich Freeman]

On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 at 11:39 AM, Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn
<chithanh@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Jeroen Roovers schrieb:
>> Mixing stable and testing is precisely what package
>> maintainers (hopefully) do when committing new versions: building and
>> running new software on a known to be stable platform on the premise
>> that the new software is likely to be merged into the stable branch
>> (before the platform changes too much).
>
> At least for x11 maintained packages, we don't support mixing of stable and
> unstable parts of X in the way that you suggest.
>
> We don't mind however whether the rest of the system is stable or not.

Ideally such restrictions should be reflected in the dependencies -
for many packages they are (for example mythtv and mythplugins require
matching versions and this is set in the mythplugins dependencies).

However, in general supporting a mixing stable and unstable doesn't
mean doing so for what amounts to split packages.  Nobody would really
expect kwin 4.10 to work with plasma-runtime 4.11, and so on.

I don't really think there are any real problems here with Gentoo.  I
think almost all maintainers evaluate individual bugs on their merits
and don't use non-standard configs as a "cop-out."  If it breaks with
reasonable but non-standard CFLAGS they should be filtered (again,
within reason).  If there is some missing version dep then it should
be stated.  As jer pointed out sometimes you get reverse dep issues
that aren't straightforward to fix.  In those cases the solution
usually isn't to close as INVALID, but to start a tracker to fix the
issue (since sooner or later it has to be fixed when the dep goes
stable).  Not all bugs can be fixed in 5 minutes, and I think users
generally appreciate that.  Likewise, some configs just aren't
supportable and a brief comment and a close-out is perfectly fine.
Like I said - take bugs on their merits.

Rich

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Rick "Zero_Chaos" Farina]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 08/22/2013 07:24 AM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 6:19 AM, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> On 22 August 2013 11:01, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> I think the result of a policy like this would be that stable keywords
>>> would get dropped on most peripheral packages, but system packages
>>> might still keep them.
>>
>> What's the point of that? Most users need more than what @system
>> provides so after they deploy the 'stable' stage3 they will
>> start pulling ~arch packages that were never tested against the stable
>> tree. It so much better if stage3 was also ~arch.
> 
> Do we actually have examples of this happening?  I've never had
> problems with a mix of stable and ~arch keywords.  Granted, I'm not
> running ~arch on most libs.
> 
> I've seen lots of talk about stable being less reliable than ~arch,
> and ~arch applications on a stable core being unreliable, but I've
> never actually seen any real evidence that either is true.  Granted,
> I'm not necessarily expecting a scientific study, but I haven't even
> heard anecdotes.  I can't offer much personally - I only really use
> stable to any extent and I find it works just fine other than the
> occasional need to unmask something.
> 
I unmask/keyword things as needed for Pentoo and I can't say I've ever
noticed a lack of stability due to it.  I have a (mostly) stable base of
@system packages and key things like DE's most of the time, but I also
randomly mix in an ~arch package or two when I need to.  Almost all of
the security tools I put on Pentoo are ~arch, and many of them pull in
some random ~arch libs, etc.  I can't say I've never had an issue but as
long as we all keep the deps are correct as possible it really isn't an
issue.

Just my $0.02

- -ZC
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.20 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/
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=5WWm
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Re: [gentoo-dev] Moving more arches to dev profiles

[Andreas K. Huettel]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: Text/Plain, Size: 2231 bytes --]

Am Sonntag, 1. September 2013, 03:02:47 schrieb Rick "Zero_Chaos" Farina:
> On 08/22/2013 07:24 AM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 6:19 AM, Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org> 
wrote:
> >> On 22 August 2013 11:01, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> >>> I think the result of a policy like this would be that stable keywords
> >>> would get dropped on most peripheral packages, but system packages
> >>> might still keep them.
> >> 
> >> What's the point of that? Most users need more than what @system
> >> provides so after they deploy the 'stable' stage3 they will
> >> start pulling ~arch packages that were never tested against the stable
> >> tree. It so much better if stage3 was also ~arch.
> > 
> > Do we actually have examples of this happening?  I've never had
> > problems with a mix of stable and ~arch keywords.  Granted, I'm not
> > running ~arch on most libs.
> > 
> > I've seen lots of talk about stable being less reliable than ~arch,
> > and ~arch applications on a stable core being unreliable, but I've
> > never actually seen any real evidence that either is true.  Granted,
> > I'm not necessarily expecting a scientific study, but I haven't even
> > heard anecdotes.  I can't offer much personally - I only really use
> > stable to any extent and I find it works just fine other than the
> > occasional need to unmask something.
> 
> I unmask/keyword things as needed for Pentoo and I can't say I've ever
> noticed a lack of stability due to it.  I have a (mostly) stable base of
> @system packages and key things like DE's most of the time, but I also
> randomly mix in an ~arch package or two when I need to.  Almost all of
> the security tools I put on Pentoo are ~arch, and many of them pull in
> some random ~arch libs, etc.  I can't say I've never had an issue but as
> long as we all keep the deps are correct as possible it really isn't an
> issue.

As a sidenote, that is exactly what --autounmask-write does as well. Meaning 
whoever uses this very nifty portage feature will end up with such a mix of 
stable and testing as well.

-- 

Andreas K. Huettel
Gentoo Linux developer 
dilfridge@gentoo.org
http://www.akhuettel.de/


[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part. --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 966 bytes --]