On Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:33:35 -0400
Mark Loeser <halc...@gentoo.org> wrote:
> I'd say this isn't correct. Unstable isn't a pure testing playground.
> its meant for packages that should be considered for stable.
I happen to disagree. Since the advent of outside overlays and layman,
we've seen many more bugs that only got discovered when the tree was
synced with some developer overlay, or when a Great Unveiling was done
after limited, private, small scale testing (as with many GNOME and KDE
releases, not to point the finger).
Keeping things out of the tree because they are "not ready for general
consumption", or indeed masking versions "for testing", are good ways
to ensure you get no widespread testing at all and find bugs at a late
stage, worst case being during or after stabilisation. When the
stable/testing mechanism works well, then all non-upstream bugs will be
discovered before stabilisation, and some can even be fixed while
stabilisation continues.
Maintainers should know what versions never to request stabilisation
for, otherwise users who expect things to more or less just
work get exposed to buggy upstream releases.
On the other hand, careful users should know to cherry-pick specific
versions to unmask through package.unmask and package.keywords instead
of using ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="arch ~arch" as a blanket measure to get the
latest versions, otherwise they will regularly see data loss,
misconfiguration, and programs that do not work at all, because:
Testing means that you are prepared to find and deal with bugs that
have not been fixed yet because they have not been found yet.
I've been working on Gentoo for nearly 4 years now to hold up that vital
distinction between testing (~hppa) and stable (hppa), and what you
propose here has proven unworkable in that practice and as a general
attitude is quite unusual.
Regards,
jer
