Marco Calviani schreef: > Hi Holly, and thanks for your clear explanation, > >>> Hi list, i would like to have clarification regarding the policy >>> of switching packages from testing to stable. Is this policy due >>> to particular bugs in the packages? >>> >> No. Gentoo's "stable" and "testing" refers to the /ebuilds/, not >> the packages. > > Well, that was my fault in explaining..... i was referring to > "versions" of a particular package.... > >> ~ARCH packages/ebuilds are normally tested for (30? 90?) days, >> after which time if no bugs are filed, they generally move into >> stable. It is hoped that users who use ~ARCH are willing to file or >> comment on bugs on bugs.gentoo.org (b.g.o). The system only works >> if everybody helps. >> > > At the root of my question there was the need to understand why kde > 3.5.1 packages are still testing even if there aren't critical bugs > at bugs.gentoo.org (as far as i was able to find...). >
Possibly because KDE is a huge suite of interrelated packages, /all/ of which must be 'stable' (in ebuild terms) so that users who have expectations of what 'stable' means will be satisfied (especially for those who run ARCH and do not use ~ARCH packages). This may be why it takes a longer time for Gentoo to move all of those packages into ARCH; a single package is obviously easier to test than the many split ebuilds that KDE contains, especially when varied combinations are involved. I recognize that 'stable' users value... stability... over "the latest and greatest", and that's fine. But it always annoys me somewhat when users then 'complain' about 'the latest and greatest' not being moved into stable in a "timely" (in their opinion) fashion. Either one wants guaranteed stability, or one is willing to possibly sacrifice some of that stability for new features or "cool factor" or whatever. The choice, like most things, Gentoo, is up to the user, and Gentoo users should always be aware that they need to explicitly choose and commit to their decision. Of course, that wouldn't be a reasonable position if one didn't trust the dev's judgement, but in fact, that's almost the first choice a Gentoo user needs to make; certainly about the status of the Portage tree, if one is not going to monitor or participate in the activities of the dev team (in this case, the KDE herd, I suppose). After all, if you think about it, the gentoo-*users* list is not really a logical place to seek answers as to why a specific arm of the development team has taken or not taken a specific action. Not that the dev list wants to hear anybody nagging them about this, mind you, but I would imagine that if any discussion is going on as to progress of migrating the ebuilds to stable, it would be there rather than here (so one could lurk and find out what was going on, if one cared to), or on an IRC channel (if one exists) or something like that. Possibly even on b.g.o., if someone has filed a bug to move KDE to stable (that happens), and a dev has responded to that bug with a reason why or why not, or with a "we're doing it, buzz off!" Gentoo is a very hands-on distro, and everyone can get involved to the extent that they're capable, and everyone is capable to some extent, because the extensive documentation enables one to know enough to do /something/ (write an ebuild, update an ebuild, file a bug, comment on a bug, etc). This is not some back-room, behind-closed-doors, "we don't want to hear from you if you don't send a patch" kind of dealie, so if you want to know the progress of the KDE herd in migrating KDE 3.5.x to stable, I'm sure it's possible to find out without a lot of difficulty. Just not necessarily from us, unless somebody who does monitor the KDE herd happens to be around (which is not a particularly efficient way of getting an answer to your question). :-) Holly -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
