[gentoo-releng] Re: Free-standing Portage / Recent stage3 tarballs / Beta

[davecode@nospammail.net]

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone.

> Markus Hauschild:
> If you really want to test ~arch packets you don't necessarily need
> ~arch stages to download, you can just switch your Installation to
> ~arch and then file bugs etc.

That's what we did, and what generated the ~tarball suggestion.

> Alex Howells:
> Look at it this way:  by running ~arch whilst *not* a Developer or
> Arch Tester you're having a very limited impact, or possibly a
> negative one. Getting onto the 'track' of contributing to the project

Contributing...I just tried a couple of suggestions?  They seem good to
me.

It isn't preference or 133t-ness.  There are technical issues with the
user machines and desktop lust.

I'm not saying "change your ways" but rather "tarball ~stuff" to help
sysadmins make their own design choices.  Any choice is a balancing act
of competing requirements.

> They've got no clue what it means, then they bitch/whine
> when they hit ABI issues or other problems and blame Gentoo.

Not in this discussion?  All I want is a cleaner way to install ~arch. 
Put all the warning stickers you want.  I agree it is *not* for average
users.

Many feel Debian unstable is the more stable branch, because it swallows
upstream bugfixes.  Debatable; can depend on the system spec.  Debian
focuses too much on servers -- it ought to fork a desktop branch, if you
ask me.  Some Debian distros have done just that.  Anyway the point is,
there can be legit reasons to run unstable; reasonable people can
differ.

There is lag between upstream package releases and distro adoption. 
Typical scene:  an upstream package advertises "now more stable!" but
the distro takes a year or two rolling it in.  Worse scene: upstream
package advertises "now supports your hardware!" but again, the distro
takes 1-2 years.

So the dilemma:  which branch is really the more "stable"?  The one that
the distro calls stable, or the one with all the latest from upstream? 
There is no one answer of course.  Obviously a release engineering
statement on the matter is going to be different from another viewpoint.

I follow release engineering's worries about user install procedures,
and that's legit.  But I am a sysadmin, unafraid of reasonable breakage
that I can fix.  I would not recommend average people install ~arch any
more than you would.  All I'm saying is ~tarballs would be nice for
experts.

My job reviews aren't based on making Gentoo penetrate this or that
market sector but making computers work.  I don't have the luxury of
explaining to folks that "the distro will take care of it in 1-2 years"
or endlessly fiddling with custom package selections ("apt-pinning" in
Debian).  Users want me out of their cubes, fast.

> run ~arch with XFS on a desktop system that doesn't have a UPS

Guilty as charged.  Running Debian unstable on XFS for years, through
dozens of storm blackouts, and zero data loss.  Ext3 lost plenty of data
before we gave up on it.  Have no intention of using ext4, either.

We should have UPSes, if only the bean counters would stop retorting
that we've never lost data, so why do we need 'em...ha.

(Good fstab tips:  barrier, noatime, nodiratime...and /tmp and /var/log
in tmpfs...)

The consensus here is that we'll wait for beta release and install that
with ~arch keyword.  Lookin' forward to it.
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  davecode@nospammail.net

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