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List:       gentoo-dev
Subject:    Re: [gentoo-dev] Very bad ebuild-writing practice.
From:       Charles Lacour <gentoo-dev () clacour ! com>
Date:       2002-08-19 1:13:14
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On Saturday 17 August 2002 11:50, Bart Verwilst wrote:
> Ok, i have NO idea what this thread is about, i just glanced at this, and
> i'll give ya my suggestion, that's it :o)
>
> || But suppose someone did want an ebuild for the hourly CVS snapshots?
> || How should it be named?
> ||
> || quakeforge-0.5.0.ebuild             # works, but is misleading
> || quakeforge-0.5.0-cvs.ebuild         # ERR!
> || quakeforge-0.5.0_cvs.ebuild         # ERR!
> || quakeforge-0.5.0_cvs_hourly.ebuild	# ERR!
> || quakeforge-0.5.0_beta1.ebuild	    # OK, but misleading also
> || ???
>
> quakeforge-0.5.0_pre020817.ebuild
>

I agree with Dan that an ebuild package that consists of an hourly CVS 
snapshot, or a direct CVS read is inappropriate for the main Gentoo tree.

I disagree with what he said about "Ebuilds should be written for things that 
are "set in stone" and don't go around changing on an hourly basis."

An ebuild (and portage in general) is a packaging and installation/removal 
system. Saying that it shouldn't be used for short-lived releases is like 
saying you shouldn't use RPMs or tarballs for such things.

I know Daniel Robbins is (or was at last report, about two weeks ago) 
dedicated to having just one "Gentoo", that has everything in the world in 
it, and that problems like flaky packages are handled by "quality control" 
(his words).

I personally think he's fantasizing on this issue. While it's quite possible 
to exert that type of quality control and have a stable, dependable set of 
packages (call it a "release" for brevity), I don't belive it's possible to 
have - in the same time and place - the rapid development and 
up-to-the-minute package selection which has so far characterized Gentoo. 
(And from what I've seen, it has characterized Gentoo because the developers 
want it that way.)

I'd suggest another location that ebuilds for packages of less-than-sterling 
character could go. Once they're done going through the development, alpha 
testing and rough beta testing, then they'd be candidates for masked ebuilds 
for the main community to check out.

As far as the name for cvs ebuilds goes, I think Bart had a very elegant 
solution for doing it within the current system. I'd rather see something 
like:
quakeforge-0.5.0-cvs-20020820201013.ebuild, where the code that pulls the CVS 
entry in picks apart the time and pulls the cvs tree as of that point in 
time.  (If you asked for quakeforge-0.5.0-cvs.ebuild, it would translate it 
to be as if you had typed "quakeforge-0.5.0-cvs-$(date 
+%Y%m%d%H%M%S).ebuild".)

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