Re: [gentoo-dev] EAPI 2 policy for portage tree

["Robert R. Russell" <nahoy_kbiki@hushmail.com>]

On Tuesday 09 December 2008 12:13:40 pm Petteri Räty wrote:
> Robert R. Russell wrote:
> > My personal opinion on this matter is pick one of the following:
> > 1)  perform the bugfix without a version bump and remain at the current
> > EAPI version
> > 2)  perform the bugfix with a version bump and remain at the current EAPI
> > version
> > 3)  perform the bugfix with a version bump and upgrade to the latest EAPI
> > Options 1 and 2 are how most updates are done, the user can mask the
> > latest version or upgrade. Option 3 allows the user to continue using the
> > previous version while they decide to update to a portage version that
> > supports the new EAPI.
>
> The current policy states that ebuilds should only be bumped if the
> installed files change. Changing EAPI from 1 to 2 has no effect outside
> the vdb so the current policy means developers should use option 3.
> There was a bug in stable Portage when EAPI 2 went in the tree that made
> Portage stack trace but that's a problem with Portage not with the
> policy in general.
>
> > I would prefer that option 3 be made policy because I run several ~arch
> > packages that either don't have a stable version (kradio) or have a
> > feature that I need (gentoo-sources), and will not be pushed to stable
> > immediately for various reasons from lack of maintainer time to everybody
> > says it conflicts with major pieces of the system (Firefox 3, 64 bit
> > netscape-flash, and xorg).
>
> Why should we prefer making it a little bit easier for stable users over
> making ~arch users needlessly recompile stuff?
>
> Regards,
> Petteri

My answer is a simple example from my own system. My current system uses a 
motherboard that is around 6 months old and is only correctly supported by 
the latest ~arch gentoo-sources. The add on video card, a 1 to 2 year old 
nvidia card, works great with x11-drivers/xf86-video-nv-2.1.12 as long as I 
am using the latest ~arch xorg-x11. The internal video card isn't even 
recognized by the xf86-video-intel drivers except the ~arch versions. Even 
some of the packages I use for school work such as kile have bugfixes and 
other improvements between the versions in stable and ~arch that are 
important to getting work done. The ability to selectively upgrade only the 
specific packages needed to get a working system is a major strength for 
Gentoo. Why should I have to run more packages from ~arch than I absolutely 
need to? We all know that upgrading more software than absolutely necessary 
will result in bad things happening to a computer.

The easiest solution to the problem with ~arch having the only working 
versions of some packages is to get more of those packages stabilized. But, 
we all know that the manpower required simply doesn't exist.