[gentoo-dev] News Item - MythTV

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

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I'm considering sending out this news item in a few days - comments
are welcome.  It is a bit different in tone from a typical news item
but MythTV has been in not-so-great shape for a while and my goal is
to reel things in a bit and commit to something we can continue to
maintain, while soliciting help from the community.

Rich

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Title: MythTV 0.24.1 Upgrade Author: Richard Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> 
Content-Type: text/plain Posted: 2011-12-08 Revision: 1 
News-Item-Format: 1.0 Display-If-Installed: media-tv/mythtv 

As many have noticed, the Gentoo version of MythTV has been 
significantly lagging the upstream version. We plan to introduce 
0.24.1, which is the current upstream stable version, in the next few 
days. Before going through the upgrade we wanted to make you aware of 
our future plans for MythTV in Gentoo and some of your alternatives. 

The Gentoo MythTV package will generally try to stay closer to upstream 
than it has in the last year, but probably will only be updated a few 
times per year at most. It will benefit from the full Gentoo QA 
process, including introduction to ~arch followed by stabilization. 
Dependencies will also be controlled in line with Gentoo QA so things 
should suddenly not stop working without warning. Versions that are 
stabilized will stay in the tree longer after they are superseded for 
those who want to take their time with upgrades. 

The versions of MythTV in Gentoo may also not support the full range of 
upstream plugins. 

There is an alternative for those of you who want a more bleeding-edge 
experience. Upstream maintains a Gentoo overlay at: 
git://github.com/MythTV/packaging.git 

The upstream repository will be the first to receive updates and will 
have many more intermediate versions including bugfixes. The overlay 
also supports all the upstream plugins. However, it is not subject to 
Gentoo QA policy - dependencies could stop working or disappear without 
warning, and older versions may not be kept around. Generally speaking, 
we have not heard complaints from those who use it. Any issues with the 
upstream overlay should be reported to the MythTV project and not to 
Gentoo bugzilla. 

If you're already using the upstream overlay you shouldn't be impacted 
by anything done in Portage - your versions will generally stay higher 
than our own. 

If we drop your favorite plugin and you want it back and are willing to 
help maintain it, send us a note at mythtv@gentoo.org. If you're 
willing to test it and ensure it works for everybody else, we can keep 
it in the portage tree.