On 7/27/06, Chris Gianelloni <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Honestly, they shouldn't be stable. In fact, likely, many shouldn't be in the tree. We have way too many packages that are used solely by a small group of people sitting around the tree. These would be better served in official overlays, where they can be maintained by the interested parties (including users), rather than in the tree.
This might be a good idea. I think some additional tools support would be useful, so that things like esearch could find things in the official overlays that are not actually present on the user's system.
The "majority" of packages are also the ones that need more extensive testing. Sure, we could probably stabilize a bunch of the fringe packages that hardly anyone uses and it wouldn't affect anything.
The majority of Aliz's database seems to be made up of these "fringe" packages. Many of which are stable on at least one arch already, or have only a single version in the tree anyway. Stabilizing these on the remaining archs that they support should not have any significant impact on the perceived overall quality of Gentoo.
Another problem is that we don't *know* what is being run by our users. This is something that the Summer of Code project for a Gentoo Stats project should at least help with, as it will give us an insight into what is actually being used and what isn't.
I hope that all users subscribe to this, it will only be useful with a large enough pool of people submitting their stats. It would also be great if Aliz's database incorporated this information when it becomes available.
Seriously, folks. If you think that packages should be available faster, run ~arch. Test the packages. Report successes/failures to the maintainers. File stabilization bugs if your favorite package hasn't had another bug in 30 days and you've been using it. Basically, help out, rather than sitting back and complaining. Complaining helps nobody.
Please don't interpret my original message as a complaint. It isn't. It is mostly a question of the process. My understanding of stabilization bugs was that they should be the exception, not the rule...
that you might not be able to make a commitment, or even want to do so. However, every single bug report that you file *is* helping out... and every little bit helps.
...and I was wrong. Regards, -Richard -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
