[gentoo-user] When a package is marked as stable or not?

[gentoo-user] When a package is marked as stable or not?

[Alarig Le Lay]

Hi,

I’m a little curious about the way a package is considered as stable or
~arch.

For exemple, app-office/libreoffice-bin is tagged stable but breaks
updates on my system since weeks; but on the other hand net-misc/bird is
~arch but I never had major issues with hit (either running and
building it).

My feeling would be to remove the stable keywork from
app-office/libreoffice-bin in the same time the default python version
has been switched to 3.6, and mark bird (and other packages) as stable
since many years.

But I’m not a gentoo developer, so perhaps there is a good reason that I
don’t know.

Cheers,
-- 
alarig

Re: [gentoo-user] When a package is marked as stable or not?

[Rich Freeman]

On Wed, Aug 22, 2018 at 8:02 AM Alarig Le Lay <alarig@swordarmor.fr> wrote:
>
> I’m a little curious about the way a package is considered as stable or
> ~arch.
>

Packages always start out in ~arch and sometimes become stable.  A
package version CAN be made stable if:
1.  It has been in ~arch for 30 days (exceptions made for security fixes)
2.  It has no major problems
3.  It works when built/run against stable dependencies.

Now, not every package that CAN be made stable actually gets marked
stable.  Half of this is the same reason that lots of desirable things
don't happen - people don't get around to it.  The other half are
situations where the maintainer doesn't think that it makes sense to
stabilize a package, usually for reasons you'd probably agree with.

If a package already is stable, then at one point in time it probably
worked fine.  It would only lose the stable keyword if it had a fairly
serious problem and it wasn't likely to get solved.  I couldn't really
speak to the current state of libreoffice-bin, but for most of its
history the binary openoffice packages have been problematic, but of
course popular.  In some sense stable is a relative term - it may be
desirable to offer both a stable and testing version of openoffice-bin
so that users who want to use it don't have to run bleeding-edge, even
if neither is as stable as the from-source version.

Also, a lot of bugs are somewhat situational.  Something that you
consider critical might not be serious to somebody else.  If the
stable version works as well as the versions marked as ~arch then
there is little benefit to dropping the stable keyword, since users
STILL will have to deal with the issue, and now they might have to
deal with other issues as well.

I guess to sum up you could say that the stable version of a package
has received more testing than an unstable version OF THE SAME
PACKAGE.  There are no promises that a stable version of one package
is comparable to a stable version of a different package.

Finally, I'll note that if you ask 10 Gentoo users/devs what they
think stable ought to be, you'll probably get at least half a dozen
answers, so the above is meant more as a description of the status quo
than anything else.

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] When a package is marked as stable or not?

[Alarig Le Lay]

Hi Rich,

Thanks a lot for your explanation. It’s a bit clearer for me now :)

-- 
alarig

Re: [gentoo-user] When a package is marked as stable or not?

[Mick]

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On Wednesday, 22 August 2018 15:24:35 BST Alarig Le Lay wrote:
> Hi Rich,
> 
> Thanks a lot for your explanation. It’s a bit clearer for me now :)

On a practical level you can keyword the ~arch version of the package, or to 
carry on with your life as is at present add:

 --exclude app-office/libreoffice-bin

when you run emerge.  At some point a libreoffice-bin version not requiring 
python_3.5 should be made stable.

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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