Re: [gentoo-user] What happens with masked packages?

[Ciaran McCreesh <ciaranm@gentoo.org>]

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On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 16:12:33 -0600 "Boyd Stephen Smith Jr."
<bss03@volumehost.com> wrote:
| From what I understand this is incorrect.  package.mask, -*, and the
| ~ARCH (and occasionally, -ARCH) keywords are supposed to indicate
| the /ebuild/'s stability, not the upstream stability.

Not exactly.

Top level package.mask means there's something wrong with the upstream
package. Often this is because it's a beta release. It can also be used
for major ebuild changes.

Profile package.mask means a package that's usually OK on a particular
architecture has to be masked on particular profiles. The canonical
example is gcc on archs where 32/64 bit is handled via subprofiles.

~arch means a package is a candidate for going into arch after further
testing, if said testing does not turn up new bugs. This means that
both the ebuild *and* the package should be likely to be stable.

No keyword means it's unknown whether a package will work on a
particular arch, because no-one has tested it.

-arch means a package will not work on a particular arch.

-* means the package is in some way architecture or hardware
independent (e.g. a binary only package), and so will only run on archs
that are explicitly listed.

Any package setting KEYWORDS="-*" and nothing else is abusing -*, and
will flag a warning on the QA checkers.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Wearer of the shiny hat)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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