Re: [gentoo-dev] [gentoo-project] Re: towards a more distributed model

["\"Paweł Hajdan, Jr.\"" <phajdan.jr@gentoo.org>]

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On 11/20/14 5:15 PM, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Nov 2014 01:36:32 +0100
> hasufell <hasufell@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> Exherbo is already running a more modular approach, I'd be interested
>> what they have to say about this or which problems they were facing.
> 
> Well the big thing is that unlike Gentoo, Exherbo was able to switch to
> using Git for its repositories. On top of that, Exherbo also has proper
> automated tinderbox runs (with automated conflict resolution) for
> changes, including across repositories, and a much stronger culture of
> accepting that breaking changes to APIs and APIs that give an error on
> misuse are necessary for a quality product, and a tolerance of
> developers making those changes and then applying the fixes to other
> people's packages. Distributed is much easier to do if you're starting
> from something which is correct and verified...

I'm glad Exherbo has been mentioned - this gives us something specific
to discuss, including how it works in practice. Using git is certainly
an advantage.

Ciaran, could you share more about the automatic tinderbox runs and
automated conflict resolution? I look at Exherbo site from time to time
but didn't notice this. Please bear with my ignorance, I've even tried
searching for things like "Exherbo tinderbox".

I think you have a good point about necessity of breaking changes from
time to time, and APIs that give an error on misuse. This reminds me of
these two other good resources:

<http://www.infoq.com/presentations/effective-api-design> (just the
slides are at <http://www.newt.com/java/GoodApiDesign-JoshBloch.pdf>)

<https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt>

Note that Linus Torvalds pays very close attention to never break
userspace. But within the kernel, large-scale changes are not uncommon,
which I think is a good thing.

Paweł


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