Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Future of gentoo's stable and unstable trees: what are your thoughts?

[William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org>]

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On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 at 07:03:25PM -0500, Denis Dupeyron wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 at 6:41 PM, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> >
> > When in the last 16 years was this 2 year period of running stable?
> > The general state of QA has varied quite a bit over that time.
> >
> 
> I would say 3 or 4 years ago, roughly.
> 
> 
> > running unstable systemd has been
> 
> 
> Running unstable doesn't mean being stupid.
 
Exactly. If you are running unstable, you are expected to know how to
pick up the pieces if something breaks. Unstable is not meant for
people who aren't comfortable with occasional breakage.

> > If unstable never breaks chances are we aren't actually using it for its
> > intended purpose, not that we
> > should be deliberately breaking things.
> 
> There's this idea that unstable should break. But the initial idea was that
> unstable is what should be sent straight to stable, barring the occasional
> mistake. Unstable was never meant for ebuilds in development and very much
> in flux because of that. That's what package masks are for.

package masks are specifically for things that are known to cause major
system breakages.

Maintainers test things to the best of their
ability before putting them in the tree, but may not cover all possible
test cases, so packages go to the ~arch tree to get much wider coverage
before they are deamed stable. That is why there is a  recommended delay
of 30 days before the package moves to stable.

William


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