[gentoo-dev] Package stabilization groups

[Matt Turner <mattst88@gentoo.org>]

Hello,

Many of us have started using `pkgdev bugs` to file stabilization
bugs. It works well (Thanks Arthur!) and I encourage everyone to give
it a try.

Where possible, it files one stabilization bug per package. This makes
arch testers' jobs easier and makes the task easier to automate.

But sometimes we do want to stabilize packages together. For example
major versions of x11-wm/mutter and gnome-base/gnome-shell are tied
together. If a new mutter is stabilized without the new gnome-shell,
the tree will still be consistent, but emerge -u @world will warn
users that the mutter upgrade is blocked.

There was some brief discussion on IRC about how to document these
groupings, and two main ideas were suggested:

- add a field to metadata.xml to specify the group by an arbitrary name.
  E.g. <stable-group name="..."/>
  Each package in the group would specify the same value of name="..."

- maintain the groups in a separate place (similar to portage @sets).

Can anyone think of particular advantages or disadvantages to one
solution versus the other? Any other (better) ideas?

Thanks,
Matt