Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: rfc: revisiting our stabilization policy

[Peter Stuge <peter@stuge.se>]

Rich Freeman wrote:
> > Why not make stable completely optional for arch teams?
> 
> Stable already is completely optional for the arch teams, and that is
> why we have concerns over stable requests taking forever on minor
> archs in the first place.  If the package wasn't marked as stable in
> the first place the maintainer could just drop old versions anytime
> they saw fit, but in the cases that cause problems the arch team
> exercises their option to stabilize something, and then they also
> exercise their option to not stabilize something newer.

Aha, I understand. Thanks!

I don't think that's "completely optional" though, it sounds like a
one-way function. If have ever stabilized a package once then must
ensure a stable package forever.

I think arbitrarily removing stable versions should also be an option,
and I think package managers would be able to deal with that without
much extra effort?

Stabilization is the distribution stretching time of upstream
development. I think it's more healthy for upstream (and thus
also for the distribution) to have the distribution be very thin,
so that users rather interact directly with upstream.

But that's of course not everyone's ideal, and that's fine. :)


//Peter