Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Re: how thorough is #emerge --sync?

[Willie Wong <wwong@princeton.edu>]

On Wed, Oct 18, 2006 at 11:30:40AM -0700, Darren Kirby wrote:
> > > Well, I'm the upstream author, and _I_ think there should be different
> > > (ie: newer) version offered. Good enough?
> >
> > No, not good enough, as that doesn't matter at all. All that matters is,
> > what's in the tree. And the latest stable version is 0.8, no matter what
> > you think. The question remains: Why should a different version be offered?
 
> Sorry Alexander, I just don't get where you're going with this. Version 0.8 
> was released September 27, 2004! There have been 4 major new releases since 
> then, which include many bug fixes, and new and improved features. 0.8 is old 
> and busted, 0.9.3 is the new hotness!

Guys, 

Just to prevent the heat from escalating, may I offer my observation 
that the two of you seems to be arguing about completely different 
things?

Alexander (and I, likewise) probably misunderstood Darren's question 
from the start: when he posted, I thought his expectation that "emerge 
dir2ogg" should bring in a newer version than what was offered was a 
lack of understanding of how the portage tree works (well, some of my 
friends do actually think that the package management system [aptget, 
rpm, portage, etc.] would actually be smart enough to automatically 
go on the internet and find and install the latest version of a 
program, so I wouldn't put any misconception past human capacity). 

But it seems clear to me now that Darren is actually asking about 
whether it is polite to give the devs a gentle nudge, asking them
to remove an old, buggy version of software from the portage tree
and add/stablize newer, updated versions (and how to go about doing
so if it is polite). 

I am actually curious about the same thing: some of the packages that 
I use are also a year or two out of date, for the most part I can 
get around it by using overlays and third-party ebuilds, and I am
making an effort to learn how to write ebuilds, but it would be nice 
to see those ebuilds committed to the official tree.

W
-- 
Willie W. Wong                                      wwong@math.princeton.edu
408 Fine Hall,  Department of Mathematics,  Princeton University,  Princeton
A mathematician's reputation rests on the number of bad proofs he has given.
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