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List:       gentoo-dev
Subject:    [OT] Re: [gentoo-dev] package.mask vs ~arch
From:       Tom Wijsman <TomWij () gentoo ! org>
Date:       2014-06-30 18:51:39
Message-ID: 20140630205139.5131b658 () gentoo ! org
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On Mon, 30 Jun 2014 02:04:20 -0400
Alexandre Rostovtsev <tetromino@gentoo.org> wrote:

> I realize that not everybody agrees with me, but I see ~arch as a
> "semi-stable" branch - an internally consistent branch for people who
> don't feel like maintaining a horrific mess of keywords and masks in
> their /etc/portage and don't want to wait weeks/months for bugfixes to
> their favorite ebuilds to be marked stable by overworked arch teams,
> and who don't mind seeing an occasional build failure or crash as a
> consequence of standing closer to the bleeding edge.

[[ TL;DR: This mail is a confirmation with some more side details. ]]

+1. I do agree; it works well, and the occasional regression that
manages to get through often isn't too bad. Maybe once in multiple
years you end up with a broken boot; however, that's not a huge problem
if you plan upgrades to not be in front of a deadline / presentation. 

> In my view, experimental work not ready for general exposure should be
> kept in overlays and/or the main tree's package.mask, depending on how
> the particular project's workflow is organized.

Indeed; take for example MATE, I bump the packages over a span of a few
days and keep it masked until mate-base/mate. With GNOME it is similar.

This is a case where I need more packages do the standard developer
testing; so, I can't just have an individual package unmasked without
being able to confirm that it actually works at run-time.

For version bumps / new packages I just don't add them to the tree till
I have confidently tested for it to not be a bug magnet, but rather a
stabilization candidate; I thus don't understand such p.mask entries. 

> At any given stability level, a system-critical library ideally ought
> to be better-tested than, say, a game or a media player. In practice,
> this sometimes doesn't happen, because some system-critical library
> maintainers don't care about ~arch users and dump experimental code in
> their laps, and in my view that's a bad thing because it encourages
> users to come up with ad-hoc mixed arch/~arch setups which have
> *never* been tested by any developer.

The granted ability to make a choice brings its own limits. :)

-- 
With kind regards,

Tom Wijsman (TomWij)
Gentoo Developer

E-mail address  : TomWij@gentoo.org
GPG Public Key  : 6D34E57D
GPG Fingerprint : C165 AF18 AB4C 400B C3D2  ABF0 95B2 1FCD 6D34 E57D

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