On 04/05/06, Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org > wrote:

On Thu, 2006-05-04 at 13:48 +0200, Bart Braem wrote:
> Does compiling KDE introduce so many bugs? I mean, let's be serious, all
> other distributions have a stable 3.5.x now. Don't they experience all
> those horrible bugs?

Compiling KDE doesn't introduce bugs.  Compiling KDE with any
combination of USE/CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS/GCC/Glibc/etc does.  Remember that
we're a from-source distribution.  Guys like Debian or Red Hat just have
to compile it *once* then they make a package of it, with exactly *one*
set of options (USE), C(XX)FLAGS, gcc, glibc, etc. making their job
infinitely easier.

> Seriously, this is really becoming an issue. As I pointed out in a bug I
> filed for a stable KDE (for which I apologize, I should have looked here
> first), some people are leaving Gentoo because of this slow upgrade
> process.

Honestly, if they're leaving over something so minor, they're free to
go.  We're not a commercial distribution.  We don't sell Gentoo.  We're
not concerned with market share.

> The classical answer from devs is "it's ready when it's ready". From a user
> point of view this is very, very vague. Please give users a more clear
> explanation, this creates great frustration when looking at other
> distributions. Because it's stable there.

As I stated above, they have a *much* lower barrier of entry for making
something stable than we do.  We've tried making this explanation over
and over again.  The problem is that every single version of $package,
people don't look at the last explanation and ask again... and again...
and again... and again.  It gets very old to answer the same question
over and over again.  The simple answer is really "when we don't have
major showstopper bugs anymore".  Again, remember that we have to
support countless combinations from our users.  Other distributions need
to support only one.  They can use forms of tricks to get it to compile
that *one* time, including adding patches and other things that might
not be suitable for a from-source distribution.

> These are my 2 cents as a user. One that loves Gentoo. One that loves KDE.
> One that's frustrated by the current situation. I am a CS so I know how
> hard programming can be, don't get me wrong there. I do appreciate what you
> guys do. But I can't understand why you do it this way right now.

Quite simply, we don't want to give you crap.

If we followed others blindly, as so many users suggest, then we would
have stabilized KDE 3.5 ages ago, and every single one of you KDE users
would be complaining about how our QA sucks because KDE doesn't compile
or breaks badly in so many places.  We would hear about how Gentoo sucks
where they can't even test such a major application as KDE properly.  We
would have users leaving in droves.  Now, we can't have both fast
stabilization *and* actual stability, so we err on the side of caution.
We don't like hearing complaints any more than anyone else, but we'd
rather hear a few "why isn't KDE stable yet" questions than *everyone*
saying we suck because KDE is broken.

I hope that sums it up for you.

By the way, this isn't just for KDE.  This is how we do *every* package.

--
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead
x86 Architecture Team
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQBEWfErkT4lNIS36YERAtKVAKDE9aVxS6dq34fleM1WPi2vOC9TGgCfb+ct
GhTF595T05xwiL60103fkAk=
=YYvC
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----