Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: stabilization policies

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Tom Wijsman <TomWij@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> That doesn't make it a special case here, imo; especially not, since
> we are designing and implementing ebuilds that _build_ the kernel.
> Whether it provides the sources, or build it; what does that matter?

Yes and no.  I don't think the kernel needs a separate
QA/stabilization policy per-se.

However, it probably isn't a good barometer of the state of the tree.
On the one hand, it is probably one of the most popular and
looked-after packages in the tree.  On the other hand it has releases
with both high frequency and impact.  There really isn't a single FOSS
project like the Linux kernel anywhere.

So this isn't about making up different rules for the kernel.  The
issue is more that I wouldn't use the kernel as my main example of the
state of the tree.  I'm not sure it even makes sense to have single
examples so much as categories.

It might be interesting to see how up-to-date stable packages are when
looking at system vs non-system (glibc vs mplayer), package popularity
(firefox vs baobab), desktop vs server (vlc vs mysql), and so on.  I
suspect though that it has as much to do with maintainer philosophy as
the package itself - some maintainers pay more attention to stable.

Rich