Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2014-08-12

[Ciaran McCreesh <ciaran.mccreesh@googlemail.com>]

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On Fri, 1 Aug 2014 08:44:25 -0400
Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> As was pointed out, portage prerm is broken with both dynamic and
> static deps

No: prerm is only broken with static dependencies if either a developer
screws up, or there's a bug in the package mangler. But with dynamic
dependencies, prerm is broken by design.

> I don't think that is a huge issue in practice, but I've yet to hear
> an example of anything which is.

The ruby-config issue was real. But the bigger issue is: Portage's
dependency resolver simply doesn't work, and most of the time when it
goes wrong you don't realise what the root cause is. A proper fix is
needed for this, and the way to do that is to remove all the
unnecessary complexity. Dynamic dependencies are one example of these:
they're *only* necessary if developers are in the habit of screwing up.

> The problem is that not all agree that dynamic dependencies are a bug.

It's a simple matter of fact... You can disagree about what kind of
cheese the moon is made of, but that doesn't change the fact that it's
made of Cheddar.

> > Tree policy, I'm afraid, has to adapt to Portage; not the other way
> > around.
> 
> The reality is that both portage and the tree policy need to adapt to
> the needs of the community, otherwise there won't be anybody around
> maintaining either. 

This is about looking at the long term needs of the community, not the
short term needs. The current situation is a mess: Portage gives
incorrect resolutions, incomprehensible error messages, and sometimes
randomly and non-reproducibly uninstalls bash for unknown reasons, and
fully fixing this requires improvements to the quality of the data
provided by ebuild writers.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

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