[gentoo-dev] Re: Notion of stable depgraph vs stable keywords (Re: Arch Status and Future Plans)

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

Sam James posted on Wed, 26 Jun 2024 01:06:12 +0100 as excerpted:

> Arthur Zamarin <arthurzam@gentoo.org> writes:
> 
>> As you all know, Gentoo supports many various arches, in various
>> degrees (stable, dev, exp). Let me explain those 3 statuses fast:
>>
>> * stable arch - meaning we have stable profile for this arch, and
>> stable keywords across base-system + varying degree of seriousness. We
>> stable stuff after ~30 days in tree, and are mostly happy. For example
>> the well known and common amd64 arch.
> 
> This mixes the notion of keywords vs profiles.
> 
> You can have a stable profile in profiles.desc without any stable
> keywords at all.
> 
> 'stable' in profiles.desc means we require CI to pass for its depgraph
> consistency. 'dev' means we warn on it. 'exp' means it doesn't even show
> up unless you opt-in with pkgcheck etc.

While that may clear things up from a developer perspective, it's still 
confusing from a user perspective (even a long-time user like me who 
religiously follows this list, tho being on amd64 personally with no 
question on it staying stable it doesn't really affect me personally at 
this time... tho not /too/ long ago I was still running a 32-bit-only atom 
netbook (tho only upgraded perhaps every year or two... which always made 
it difficult but possible with some time and patience) so it /could/ still 
affect me and I'm concerned about others still affected).

Taking the one most likely to affect the greatest number of users as an 
example, what practical effects would dropping x86 to dev (I'm assuming no 
one's suggesting dropping it straight to experimental) have on remaining 
x86 users?

How would it differ if they're already running ~x86 vs stable x86 
(keywording), assuming the same currently stable x86 profile?

And (again from a user perspective) how does dropping x86 to dev differ 
from the mentioned apparently worse alternative, mass dekeywording?

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman