[gentoo-dev] stable and unstable branches.

[gentoo-dev] stable and unstable branches.

[Stefano Peluchetti]

I think it should really be a very good idea to create two different 
branches of the gentoo distribution. A stable and a unstalbe (or 
testing) one. This becouse i usually find that some e-build simpy does 
not compile. I know that it is a relly difficult task to get all the 
e-build working right, but i also think that some people (like me) 
should prefer to work with a little outdated packages that have been 
tested for some time, instead of having to work with cutting edge 
packages that doesn't compile. Don't get me wrong. I belive that gentoo 
is the best linux distro i have ever seen, but this should really be an 
important way to go.
It also should be really easy to implement thanks to the possibility to 
select different profiles.
So let me know what you think about this.
Thanks

Stefano Peluchetti

Re: [gentoo-dev] stable and unstable branches.

[Karl Trygve Kalleberg]

On Tue, 23 Jul 2002, Stefano Peluchetti wrote:

> It also should be really easy to implement thanks to the possibility to 
> select different profiles.

We're slowly introducing the concept of "Quality Assurance" into the
Gentoo development process. 

This is a time-consuming process, of which a split into stable/unstable is
but a small part (although probably the one that will be most visible to
the users). 

In exactly what form such a split will manifest itself is still not know,
but rest assured we're working on it.


For now, to avoid any disappointments wrt stability, think of Gentoo as
"bleeding-edge".


Kind regards,

Karl T

Re: [gentoo-dev] stable and unstable branches.

[Terje Kvernes]

Karl Trygve Kalleberg <karltk@prosalg.no> writes:

  [ with regards to the stable / unstable branches ]

> In exactly what form such a split will manifest itself is still not
> know, but rest assured we're working on it.

  it might only be me, but I'd love to eavesdrop.  :-)
 
-- 
Terje

Re: [gentoo-dev] stable and unstable branches.

[Christian Bartl]

I don't think that it would be such a good idea.
I can only speak for myself: As I love Gentoo, but don't have the time to test
known unstable software I'm sure I would be the first user who never touches
the unstable branch. I think Gentoo would get the same problems like GNU/Linux
or Debian: Everyone waits for it getting officially stable and testing is has
to be done by a few freaks.
Whoever needs a stable Gentoo now only has to read the mailing-lists an knows
about common problems.
So you great developers: if you want to get you ports tested by many people
don't tell the community (and me :-) that it isn't stable.

best regards
Christian

At 22:06 23.07.2002 +0200, you wrote:
>I think it should really be a very good idea to create two different 
>branches of the gentoo distribution. A stable and a unstalbe (or testing) 
>one. This becouse i usually find that some e-build simpy does not compile. 
>I know that it is a relly difficult task to get all the e-build working 
>right, but i also think that some people (like me) should prefer to work 
>with a little outdated packages that have been tested for some time, 
>instead of having to work with cutting edge packages that doesn't compile. 
>Don't get me wrong. I belive that gentoo is the best linux distro i have 
>ever seen, but this should really be an important way to go.
>It also should be really easy to implement thanks to the possibility to 
>select different profiles.
>So let me know what you think about this.
>Thanks
>
>Stefano Peluchetti
>
>_______________________________________________
>gentoo-dev mailing list
>gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
>http://lists.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev
>

Re: [gentoo-dev] stable and unstable branches. (auto-bug reports???)

[Stefano Peluchetti]

I know of this problem.
The thing that amazes me is that i very rarely find a bug report for the 
ebuild that doesn't work for me. I usaually commit the bugs i find but 
now it seems clear that some people does'nt do so.
I thing it could be a good idea at this point to introduce an automatic 
(user indipendent) bug report in portage, so that if ebuild compiling 
fails or some other errors arise, portage automagically submit a bug to 
the bug dabatabase of gentoo. That should speed up bugfixing (at lease 
for the majors bugs that prevent even building) and should' nt be that 
hard to implement in portage.
Bye

Stefano Peluchetti

P.S. sorry 4 the bad english


Christian Bartl wrote:
> I don't think that it would be such a good idea.
> I can only speak for myself: As I love Gentoo, but don't have the time 
> to test
> known unstable software I'm sure I would be the first user who never 
> touches
> the unstable branch. I think Gentoo would get the same problems like 
> GNU/Linux
> or Debian: Everyone waits for it getting officially stable and testing 
> is has
> to be done by a few freaks.
> Whoever needs a stable Gentoo now only has to read the mailing-lists an 
> knows
> about common problems.
> So you great developers: if you want to get you ports tested by many people
> don't tell the community (and me :-) that it isn't stable.
> 
> best regards
> Christian
> 
> At 22:06 23.07.2002 +0200, you wrote:
> 
>> I think it should really be a very good idea to create two different 
>> branches of the gentoo distribution. A stable and a unstalbe (or 
>> testing) one. This becouse i usually find that some e-build simpy does 
>> not compile. I know that it is a relly difficult task to get all the 
>> e-build working right, but i also think that some people (like me) 
>> should prefer to work with a little outdated packages that have been 
>> tested for some time, instead of having to work with cutting edge 
>> packages that doesn't compile. Don't get me wrong. I belive that 
>> gentoo is the best linux distro i have ever seen, but this should 
>> really be an important way to go.
>> It also should be really easy to implement thanks to the possibility 
>> to select different profiles.
>> So let me know what you think about this.
>> Thanks
>>
>> Stefano Peluchetti
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> gentoo-dev mailing list
>> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
>> http://lists.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev
>>
> 
> _______________________________________________
> gentoo-dev mailing list
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
> http://lists.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev
> 

Re: [gentoo-dev] stable and unstable branches. (auto-bug reports???)

[Stefano Peluchetti]

Ben Lutgens wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 24, 2002 at 12:12:45AM +0200, Stefano Peluchetti wrote:
> 
>>I know of this problem.
>>The thing that amazes me is that i very rarely find a bug report for the 
>>ebuild that doesn't work for me. I usaually commit the bugs i find but 
>>now it seems clear that some people does'nt do so.
>>I thing it could be a good idea at this point to introduce an automatic 
>>(user indipendent) bug report in portage, so that if ebuild compiling 
>>fails or some other errors arise, portage automagically submit a bug to 
>>the bug dabatabase of gentoo. That should speed up bugfixing (at lease 
>>for the majors bugs that prevent even building) and should' nt be that 
>>hard to implement in portage.
> 
> 
> People would go postal if gentoo was making network connections from thier
> boxen to our servers without thier knowledge. And rightly so. 
> 
> I'm in favor of an interactive bug report tool but bugzilla wouldn't
> facilitate that very well. Frankly I'd rather the users take a few mins to
> verify they have a bug, organize thier thoughts about it and then post.
> 
> And please, please, don't use bugzilla as a discussion board for your
> issues, work them out on the lists or forums untill you know it's a bug.
> 

Ok, but a simple message like:
"A problem arise with e-build xxx. Could i automaitcally submit a bug 
report for you? [Y/N]" should'nt do the work?
Also a little wizard that places needed information for bug report could 
be a different soluction.
But i think that this will make the work easier only for user who wants 
to spend their time submitting bugs. I may be wrong, but i thnink that a 
lot of gentoo user doesn't submit bug reports (as mantainer alway 
says!). And things won't change (i hope i'm wrong but....)
To me it didn't sound that bad to have an used indipendent suluction. 
Myabe an intermediate soluction? ( a spearate bug report database, where 
mantainer looks, and decide to submit a bug to the official database 
(it'  a real bug! :D )or discard it (the user is an idiot! :P ).
Thanks.

Stefano Pelux

Re: [gentoo-dev] stable and unstable branches.

[Christian Axelsson]

How about mask the "unstable" ebuilds in the stable distribution?
That provides a simple solution for the Debian problem. If you want that
new bleeding edge ebuild, just unmask it on your own risk. It will probably 
just be as stable as it is today.
But to talk against myself on this: 

GenToo Linux is a distribution for powerusers by powerusers :)

And as mentioned in another mail in this thread; there's a bugzilla page: USE IT!
I've submitted alot of bugs already and I've only been using gentoo for a month and ALL
bugs have been solved within a day or two

--
Christian Axelsson
smiler@lanil.mine.nu

--------------------
On Tue, 23 Jul 2002 23:31:36 +0200
Christian Bartl <psy-sec@gmx.at> wrote:

> I don't think that it would be such a good idea.
> I can only speak for myself: As I love Gentoo, but don't have the time to test
> known unstable software I'm sure I would be the first user who never touches
> the unstable branch. I think Gentoo would get the same problems like GNU/Linux
> or Debian: Everyone waits for it getting officially stable and testing is has
> to be done by a few freaks.
> Whoever needs a stable Gentoo now only has to read the mailing-lists an knows
> about common problems.
> So you great developers: if you want to get you ports tested by many people
> don't tell the community (and me :-) that it isn't stable.
> 
> best regards
> Christian
> 
> At 22:06 23.07.2002 +0200, you wrote:
> >I think it should really be a very good idea to create two different 
> >branches of the gentoo distribution. A stable and a unstalbe (or testing) 
> >one. This becouse i usually find that some e-build simpy does not compile. 
> >I know that it is a relly difficult task to get all the e-build working 
> >right, but i also think that some people (like me) should prefer to work 
> >with a little outdated packages that have been tested for some time, 
> >instead of having to work with cutting edge packages that doesn't compile. 
> >Don't get me wrong. I belive that gentoo is the best linux distro i have 
> >ever seen, but this should really be an important way to go.
> >It also should be really easy to implement thanks to the possibility to 
> >select different profiles.
> >So let me know what you think about this.
> >Thanks
> >
> >Stefano Peluchetti
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >gentoo-dev mailing list
> >gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
> >http://lists.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev
> >
> 
> _______________________________________________
> gentoo-dev mailing list
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
> http://lists.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev
> 

Re: [gentoo-dev] stable and unstable branches.

[Chad M. Huneycutt]

Christian Axelsson wrote:
> How about mask the "unstable" ebuilds in the stable distribution?
> That provides a simple solution for the Debian problem. If you want that
> new bleeding edge ebuild, just unmask it on your own risk. It will probably 
> just be as stable as it is today.
> But to talk against myself on this: 

KEYWORDS will let us do this alot more effectively.  The way they work 
is that an ebuild will have

KEYWORDS="unstable"

to indicate that an ebuild needs to be tested before it can be called 
"stable".  A user can list which keywords they will accept, so if you 
accept "unstable" packages, then those will be available to you.

This is a rough description of how they will work.  We still have some 
details to work out, and I don't have the full picture yet, but expect 
an announcement soon.  We are also using this functionality to support 
the alternative architectures.

Chad

Re: [gentoo-dev] stable and unstable branches.

[Alexander Gretencord]

On Wednesday 24 July 2002 06:32, Christian Axelsson wrote:
> How about mask the "unstable" ebuilds in the stable distribution?

That's the same. The people he is talking about won't unmask it.

> GenToo Linux is a distribution for powerusers by powerusers :)

Exactly _but_ I'd really like to have a "stable" gentoo that you can use in a 
production environment without the need to test every lil thing yourself. 
That's why managers normally want something like RH so they can have others 
test everything and blame them if something goes wrong.

Also there needs to be some quality control even for power users. I am no 
newbie and have submitted some ebuilds but some things I just wanna merge and 
know they work. I made my own custom ebuild for apache but I surely would not 
do anything about say openoffice ... just build it (or in that case better 
merge openoffice-bin :)) and have it work.


Alex

-- 
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety 
deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin

Re: [gentoo-dev] stable and unstable branches.

[Fredrik Jagenheim]

On Tue, Jul 23, 2002 at 11:31:36PM +0200, Christian Bartl wrote:
> I don't think that it would be such a good idea.

I think it's an excellent idea. :)

> I can only speak for myself: As I love Gentoo, but don't have the
> time to test known unstable software I'm sure I would be the first
> user who never touches the unstable branch. I think Gentoo would get
> the same problems like GNU/Linux or Debian: Everyone waits for it
> getting officially stable and testing is has to be done by a few
> freaks.

I decided to check out Gentoo 3 days ago; and still haven't got my
system up running as I want it. This is not a surprise to me, I know
gentoo is bleeding edge and frankly I'm delightfully surprised how
well it all went. The compilation failures I got is already in
bugs.gentoo.org, with fixes or acknowledges from the developers that
they're looking into the problem. I found the people on #gentoo
extremly helpful and pleasant to deal with, so there really isn't
anything to complain about regarding the experience I have with gentoo
and its community.

Does this mean that I am wiping the desktop I use for workrelated
issues (now running Debian/testing) or my servers (Debian/stable) in
favour of gentoo? No, and I will not until there are a way for me to
be relative sure that after an 'emerge rsync', I still can use the
machines. I run Debian/testing on my workstation because I know that
the most obvious bugs have been caught in testing, and Debian/stable
on my servers since I can't under any circumstances afford any
downtime on them.

Of course, my laptop used to run Debian/unstable. This was so I could
use the latest packages and know what my Debian/testing systems would
get in a short amount of time. It is now converted to gentoo for
evaluation purposes.

> Whoever needs a stable Gentoo now only has to read the mailing-lists
> an knows about common problems.

No, this is not under any circumstances enough. You couldn't get a
stable Debian from only reading the mailing-lists and using the
unstable branch. It is impossible to follow a branch that changes
every few hours and not run into dependency problems. Especially not
when you are compiling the sources for yourself. You are bound to run
into a problem noone else has encountered before, because the release
hasn't been out long enough for anyone to test it with various
configurations.

As I see it, the package-masking system is already used today for
hiding the most broken packages from the user. I think it would melt
in well if that masking system was used for the seperation of
unstable/stable branches. That way, a user could decide to have KDE as
bleeding edge, but the base system as 'stable'. It would need a lot of
thinking of course, but the basis is there. :)

Sorry for ranting,
//Humming