[gentoo-dev] new developers' keyword requests

[Jeroen Roovers <jer@gentoo.org>]

Perhaps it's a good idea to add a section to the devmanual about adding
new keywords to packages.

Recruits in particular might benefit from some background on what
keywording means and when it should be done, especially before they
start maintaining packages and then realise their packages are so
beautiful that they positively *deserve* to have some random keywords
added. This is not productive.

The way it works is that users of
specific architectures find that a package works for them on their
systems (which have enough resources and have the correct interfaces for
that particular program to be used conveniently, and so on), and that
they then request that their architecture keyword be added. What
doesn't work is having a handful of keywords on a package that nobody
cares about who actually uses the architectures in question.

Since over the years the Random Keyword Requests happen a *lot* right
after recruitment, it might even be useful to ask about this in the
quizzes. (The answer: your time is better spent fixing actual bugs.
bumping versions, adding features and maintaining a stable branch,
rather than raising the architecture count for your packages for no
adequately explored reason.)


Kind regards,
     jer