[gentoo-user] Masking for Educational Purposes only ?

[gentoo-user] Masking for Educational Purposes only ?

[Helmut Jarausch]

Hi,

portage-2.2.. has been masked.
/usr/portage/profiles/package.mask tells me why

"In order to ensure that portage-2.1.6 gets sufficient testing,
 portage-2.2 will be masked in package.mask until portage-2.1.6 has
 been marked stable."

I feel like someone will try to educate me.
Yes, I can and will unmask it again, but why
am I forced to?

I'd prefer if package.mask is used for buggy or dangerous
packages only.

-- 
Helmut Jarausch

Lehrstuhl fuer Numerische Mathematik
RWTH - Aachen University
D 52056 Aachen, Germany

Re: [gentoo-user] Masking for Educational Purposes only ?

[Daniel Pielmeier]

2008/11/24 Helmut Jarausch <jarausch@igpm.rwth-aachen.de>:
> Hi,
>
> portage-2.2.. has been masked.
> /usr/portage/profiles/package.mask tells me why
>
> "In order to ensure that portage-2.1.6 gets sufficient testing,
>  portage-2.2 will be masked in package.mask until portage-2.1.6 has
>  been marked stable."
>
> I feel like someone will try to educate me.
> Yes, I can and will unmask it again, but why
> am I forced to?
>
> I'd prefer if package.mask is used for buggy or dangerous
> packages only.

I will try to explain this a bit from what I know from mailing-lists and IRC.

First there are no problems with portage-2.2. It has been masked
because some features are not ready and thus are blocking
stabilisation. As a conclusion portage-2.1.6 has been branched out
without this features to get a stable version into the tree which has
support for eapi 2 and all other features that are ready.

To get more testing to 2.1.6 version it has been decided to mask 2.2
with the hope more people are using 2.1.6 to get remaining bugs fixed
and to get it stable quickly. Of course some users which are for
instance using kde-4 or other stuff which will need features that are
only in 2.2 will have to unmask portage 2.2 to get the system running.

This is one thing that annoys me a bit of gentoo. There is way to much
information that is not passed to the users, a short announcement
which explains the situation on the homepage, forum or even the
gentoo-user mailing list and everything would be fine. Some things
important for users are often discussed only on IRC or the gentoo-dev
mailing list so they do not reach most of the users. Examples are this
portage masking and the perl package moves to name a few things that
happened recently.

-- 
Regards,
Daniel

Re: [gentoo-user] Masking for Educational Purposes only ?

[Dale]

Daniel Pielmeier wrote:
>
> I will try to explain this a bit from what I know from mailing-lists and IRC.
>
> First there are no problems with portage-2.2. It has been masked
> because some features are not ready and thus are blocking
> stabilisation. As a conclusion portage-2.1.6 has been branched out
> without this features to get a stable version into the tree which has
> support for eapi 2 and all other features that are ready.
>
> To get more testing to 2.1.6 version it has been decided to mask 2.2
> with the hope more people are using 2.1.6 to get remaining bugs fixed
> and to get it stable quickly. Of course some users which are for
> instance using kde-4 or other stuff which will need features that are
> only in 2.2 will have to unmask portage 2.2 to get the system running.
>
> This is one thing that annoys me a bit of gentoo. There is way to much
> information that is not passed to the users, a short announcement
> which explains the situation on the homepage, forum or even the
> gentoo-user mailing list and everything would be fine. Some things
> important for users are often discussed only on IRC or the gentoo-dev
> mailing list so they do not reach most of the users. Examples are this
> portage masking and the perl package moves to name a few things that
> happened recently.
>
>   

Of course, there is the Gentoo monthly newsletter.  Supposed to be
monthly anyway.  I haven't seen one in a while so it may be going
quarterly this time.  ;-)

I do wish they had or would use a announce mailing list to inform people
of changes, big ones anyway, that are coming or in the process of
happening.  At least that way we would know what is about to get borked
or worse and require some huge emerges to get back on track. 

Anyway . . . .

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Masking for Educational Purposes only ?

[Daniel Pielmeier]

2008/11/24 Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>:
>
> Of course, there is the Gentoo monthly newsletter.  Supposed to be
> monthly anyway.  I haven't seen one in a while so it may be going
> quarterly this time.  ;-)
>
> I do wish they had or would use a announce mailing list to inform people
> of changes, big ones anyway, that are coming or in the process of
> happening.  At least that way we would know what is about to get borked
> or worse and require some huge emerges to get back on track.

Well, this is probably another thing that has not reached the user
base :-) The main author of the GWN sent a message to the
gentoo-dev-announce mailing-list:

Hi Folks,

I've been extremely busy traveling & attending conferences for the
last few weeks and will be required to continue the same for atleast 2
weeks more; and nightmorph is just recovering from his failed
hardware. As a result, there will be no October issue of the GMN. We
hope to resume to normality by the end of November.

Apologies.

-- 
Regards,
Daniel

Re: [gentoo-user] Masking for Educational Purposes only ?

[Dale]

Daniel Pielmeier wrote:
> 2008/11/24 Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>:
>   
>> Of course, there is the Gentoo monthly newsletter.  Supposed to be
>> monthly anyway.  I haven't seen one in a while so it may be going
>> quarterly this time.  ;-)
>>
>> I do wish they had or would use a announce mailing list to inform people
>> of changes, big ones anyway, that are coming or in the process of
>> happening.  At least that way we would know what is about to get borked
>> or worse and require some huge emerges to get back on track.
>>     
>
> Well, this is probably another thing that has not reached the user
> base :-) The main author of the GWN sent a message to the
> gentoo-dev-announce mailing-list:
>
> Hi Folks,
>
> I've been extremely busy traveling & attending conferences for the
> last few weeks and will be required to continue the same for atleast 2
> weeks more; and nightmorph is just recovering from his failed
> hardware. As a result, there will be no October issue of the GMN. We
> hope to resume to normality by the end of November.
>
> Apologies.
>
>   

I remember seeing that.  Sounds like they need three people in the loop
instead of two.  Bad things happen.  About three weeks ago I was in the
hospital not sure I was going to live so I know first hand how downhill
things can go in a huge hurry. 

Someone will come up with a plan at some point, I just hope it is sooner
rather than later.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Masking for Educational Purposes only ?

[GMail]

On Monday 24 November 2008 11:58:41 Dale wrote:
> Of course, there is the Gentoo monthly newsletter.  Supposed to be
> monthly anyway.  I haven't seen one in a while so it may be going
> quarterly this time.  ;-)

Oh, you mean the GAN? As in Gentoo Annual Newsletter?

I understand why it's irregular - it's a lot of work and nobody's 
volunteering. That's fine, but as such it does not make a good effective 
communication channel as everything will be announced long after the fact

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Masking for Educational Purposes only ?

[GMail]

On Monday 24 November 2008 10:15:46 Helmut Jarausch wrote:
> Hi,
>
> portage-2.2.. has been masked.
> /usr/portage/profiles/package.mask tells me why
>
> "In order to ensure that portage-2.1.6 gets sufficient testing,
>  portage-2.2 will be masked in package.mask until portage-2.1.6 has
>  been marked stable."
>
> I feel like someone will try to educate me.
> Yes, I can and will unmask it again, but why
> am I forced to?
>
> I'd prefer if package.mask is used for buggy or dangerous
> packages only.

+1

I ran into this same thing this morning and felt like mailing Zac a piece of 
my mind. Sanity prevailed though.

I still feeling quite deeply offended though that a package maintainer has 
forced me to jump through a hoop simply because he would like an earlier 
version to "get tested more".

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Masking for Educational Purposes only ?

[b.n.]

GMail ha scritto:
> I ran into this same thing this morning and felt like mailing Zac a piece of 
> my mind. Sanity prevailed though.
> 
> I still feeling quite deeply offended though that a package maintainer has 
> forced me to jump through a hoop simply because he would like an earlier 
> version to "get tested more".

Well, why? If you want to test 2.2 instead, you can do it. It's not
blocking you from anything.

He wants users to test *more* a given version, and that in turn will
probably benefit us all. It's a psychological trick, maybe, but an
absolutely innocent one. In fact, once you know that, you *should* jump
the bandwagon and help test the previous version.

m.

Re: [gentoo-user] Masking for Educational Purposes only ?

[Arttu V.]

On 11/24/08, b.n. <brullonulla@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, why? If you want to test 2.2 instead, you can do it. It's not
> blocking you from anything.

Yes, before the change the only thing blocking portage 2.2 was ~arch.
Now it requires the bigger tool, Thor's Hammer of Unmasking +5 (+15
against portage devs and other undead? ;) ).

> He wants users to test *more* a given version, and that in turn will
> probably benefit us all. It's a psychological trick, maybe, but an
> absolutely innocent one. In fact, once you know that, you *should* jump
> the bandwagon and help test the previous version.

Let's think for a moment about the logic and psychology underlying
this situation.

Why have these people upgraded to unstable portage 2.2 in the first
place? Just to "test it out"? To show off ricing to the debian and
ubuntu kids running their ancient stable stuff? No, it's the package
manager for crying out loud! My guess is that most have packages
explicitly requiring them to run the newer portage, packages like
anything related to kde4.

Will such people help with testing of 2.1 on their normal system? No.
So how many new testers did this actually acquire? And how much work
was wasted unmasking the packages and ranting on mailing lists?

My guess is zero new testers and a lot of time wasted with hundreds or
thousands of people whipping out their text editors and unmasking the
package, then going off ranting on mailing lists, forums and irc
channels.

So, yes, I'd tend to agree with Mr McKinnon and Mr Jarausch on this
issue. Something was bad in this execution of this "need more testers"
-- regardless of the possible original good intentions.

/semi-serious-rant

-- 
Arttu V.