Re: [gentoo-dev] package.mask vs ~arch

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 12:32 PM, William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 06:13:45PM +0200, Jeroen Roovers wrote:
>> On Mon, 30 Jun 2014 11:40:19 -0400
>> Ian Stakenvicius <axs@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>
>> > But... if I unmask it, -everyone- using ~arch will install it and
>> > it'll break all the systems that it doesn't work on, which -could- be
>> > quite a lot at this point.  :D
>>
>> Which is great, because then you have an actual test result, whereas
>> before you had nothing but a stupid mask.
>>
>> And lots of people are suddenly very much interested in getting any and
>> all bugs fixed in the new ebuild, whereas before you only had the stupid
>> mask.
>>
>>
>>      jer
>
> I am going to agree with Jer on this.
>
> As said before, ~arch users know that their systems will break
> sometimes, so if the package works for you, unleash it on ~arch. If
> someone using a configuration you don't have finds that it breaks, I'm
> sure it would be reported. Then you could determine whether the bug is
> severe enough to warrant a mask.
>

We're not talking about packages that work for the maintainer.  We're
talking about packages where the maintainer doesn't know if they work.
Or at least, those are the packages I'm talking about.

Everybody seems to think that this is a debate between having newer
ebuilds in the tree masked vs unmasked.  This is a debate between
having newer ebuilds in the tree masked vs not having them in the tree
at all.  Nobody is going to put an ebuild in the tree unmasked if they
don't know that it is going to work, and per earlier comments anybody
who does that probably shouldn't have commit privs.

Rules won't make maintainers do more work.  They can only prevent
maintainers from doing certain kinds of work.  That is why I tend to
oppose more rules unless they actually are preventing some kind of
harm, or having a likely benefit.  I just don't see the benefit here.

I'm fine with a policy that says that packages should only be masked
for testing if they're actually being tested and there is some kind of
roadmap for getting rid of the mask.

I don't like seeing 3 year old masks in the profile either.  Let's try
to curtail that kind of thing.  However, I think we're in danger of
throwing the baby out with the bath water here.  I cringe anytime I
hear somebody say that ~arch has fewer issues than stable, but the
solution to that isn't to go looking for opportunities to break ~arch.

Rich