Re: [gentoo-dev] Dependencies default to accept any slot value acceptable (:*), can we default to :0 instead?

[Patrick Lauer <patrick@gentoo.org>]

On 12/09/2013 12:54 AM, Tom Wijsman wrote:

> Creating a new SLOT is the most sane thing going forward; but, as the
> default (:*) depends on any SLOT, this needs a half thousand commits to
> fix up reverse dependencies. Thus, instead a new package is made. [1]


Pff. Lazy.



> When our defaults force us down such path, that can't be good and it
> affects the quality of our Portage tree; so, this makes me wonder, can
> we change the default from :* to :0? What do you think?

That just shifts the breakage to other people, who then have to do more
work.

> If we agree we do this; in order to change :* to :0, we need to change
> the PMS to cover this change and implement it in the package managers.
> 
> Before we do that, we need to evaluate how practical this is to apply.
> While we are trying to fix the default behavior, what would changing
> the default from :* to :0 break?
> 
> One thing that directly comes to mind is that dependencies that have no
> SLOT="0" ebuild present would need us to manually specify a specific
> SLOT; given that this is a not so common situation, the amount of
> commits needed here is low.

And now you make updating a lot more fun, because slotted packages need
to be explicitly changed if there's a new slot happening. Just to hide
your own laziness.

> Another thing that comes to mind is that we need to check what to do
> with packages were the highest available version does not belong to
> SLOT="0"; technically, restricting these to SLOT="0" will not cause
> breakage, it might however cause some blockers. We'll have to look
> closer into how we can alleviate this result.

Yup, bad idea.

500 commits vs. making things more complicated for everyone ... srsly?