Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: dropping redundant stable keywords

[Tom Wijsman <TomWij@gentoo.org>]

On Mon, 3 Feb 2014 06:25:24 +0000
"Steven J. Long" <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:

> Closing those bugs as WONTFIX is more work, and in some cases the bugs
> would be justified, if the user is on the slow arch in question.

They are less work; since it lets the slower arches move their work to
bugs of important packages that need their attention, instead of bugs
of non-important packages were the stabilization isn't really necessary.

> The arguments and headaches at the user, bug
> and AT sides are causing more work (or detracting from real work) too.

Yes, the less work that we can do, the more work the user has to do as
a natural consequence; discussions like these are there to prevent
those headaches way in advance, as we can proper adapt and/or respond
to the situation. And if needed, bring out news such that the user is
well informed. Not sure which argumentation this is about though.

> I don't think it should be general policy to drop stable keywords; as
> someone said, the latest stable in the tree /is/ the stable one, and
> there's no real point in adding work, *unless* the maintainer
> actually wants to drop the ebuild, but cannot due to the holdup with
> slower archs.

The policy[1] that was formed on this requires this to be at least 90
days after the stabilization for the new version was filed and the arch
team doesn't respond within that time; the old stable version is even
much older than that, if you assume it was stabilized after 30 days,
we're talking about versions that are at least 4 months old.

Knowing not everyone follows stabilization of their packages that well,
you can add a bit more time to that. If an arch team can't stabilize a
package every half year, then one can't expect that package to remain
stable; but in general, yes, dropping it unconditionally would be bad.

 [1] Quality Assurance / Policies / Dropping Stable KEYWORDs
 https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Quality_Assurance/Policies#Dropping_Stable_KEYWORDs

> Just keep the old ebuilds as useful metadata, subject to the usual
> version-control cycle, but iff it's causing you problems and you want
> to drop it, mark it with: "-* slowe rarch" so we can script off it and
> automate bug-handling etc. so your life is easier, as well as the
> archs in question (and their users.)

As stated before, -* means something way different; it is a suggestion
that does not fit this thread. Like before, did you mean "slower arch"?

And even if you did, we have then already been using this practice for
a long while; it is different from the problem that was brought up here.

-- 
With kind regards,

Tom Wijsman (TomWij)
Gentoo Developer

E-mail address  : TomWij@gentoo.org
GPG Public Key  : 6D34E57D
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