Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Reworking package stabilization policies

[Richard Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On 03/28/2010 06:04 AM, Tomáš Chvátal wrote:
>
> Basically you are saying that NONE tested that package on the arch until
> the stablerequest. That's quite wrong and it should mean that the arch
> should be ~ only, since they are stabling packages that they first
> tested the day they stable them.
>

Well, keep in mind that if a package is marked ~arch, it is getting 
used, but for the most part it isn't getting used with other packages 
that are stable.  So, if your package is ~arch for a period of time that 
gives you strong evidence that it works with openrc, but no evidence as 
to whether it works with baselayout-1, which is what stable users have.

So, I would argue that for any package to be stabilized on an arch it 
should be tested on that arch on a stable platform.

amd64 has had the policy that any dev can stabilize if they've tested it 
on a stable amd64 system, and this hasn't really caused problems.

Perhaps we should encourage understaffed arch teams to recruit more arch 
testers if possible?  Then any dev could ask an arch tester to test on 
some platform that they don't have access to, and then stabilize 
accordingly?

For arch-neutral packages a more liberal policy might be possible, but 
keep in mind that the set of stable packages is not the same across 
archs.  So, unless you check carefully you might not be testing the same 
library dependency versions from one stable platform to another, and 
that could cause problems.

Rich