On 09/13/2010 10:13 PM, J. Roeleveld wrote:
On Monday 13 September 2010 21:00:42 Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
On 09/13/2010 09:45 PM, J. Roeleveld wrote:
[...]
I wouldn't expect people to run a Gentoo system with all packages on
unstable. I tend to only select specific packages as unstable when I
really need that version.
Usually the best "stability" is reached by running either full stable or
full testing (aka "unstable"). Mixing usually makes things worse. I
used to run a mixed system, but at some point it was clear to me that
this fscks things up quite often due to package versions whether ~arch
packages breaking with arch ones.
This is true, but not all packages I want are in stable, this forces me to
unmask these.
I also don't always want to wait for packages to become stable.
What I currently have in "/etc/portage/package.keywords is:
=games-strategy/x2-1.4.05 ~amd64
=games-strategy/x3-2.5.01 ~amd64
=app-emulation/virtualbox-bin-3.2.8 ~amd64
=app-emulation/virtualbox-modules-3.2.8 ~amd64
These don't have a large set of additional requirements. If they did, I
wouldn't have upgraded to these. I also had "qt-creator" in there, but that
one has become stable since.
I'm still not clear how versions can be made to be marked "stable".
After they go into testing and stay there for a month or two, someone
makes a request to put it into stable. AFAIK, this request can also be
automated.
The person putting it into stable is then required to sanity check the
package whether it can work with the rest of stable packages, since they
differ from the testing ones.
And that step is what makes a fully ~arch system more reliable then a
mixed one; because the package is known to work in an ~arch system, but
it's not known whether it works OK in a stable one. It's also a reason
why many devs don't accept bug reports if you're using an ~arch package
in a stable system; it's just too random and problems are expected.
With Gentoo, a stable system is supposed to work (obviously). An ~arch
system is also supposed to work (note that "testing" doesn't mean
"broken"; I try to avoid the term "unstable" when I refer to ~arch,
"testing" is the term that accurately describes what ~arch is.) But a
mixed system is not supposed to work ("not supposed" meaning no one is
trying to make it work or even testing it.)
