On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 11:24 PM, Diego Elio Pettenò <[email protected]> wrote:
> Il giorno ven, 01/10/2010 alle 20.43 +0530, Nirbheek Chauhan ha scritto:
>>
>> Does lafilefixer fix binpkgs now? As well as the vdb manifests for the
>> files? If it doesn't, I strongly object to having it as an official
>> recommendation. A surprisingly large no. of people (at least on
>> bugzilla) have FEATURES=buildpkg .
>
> And usually (even if not always) have one system where they build and
> one system where they install. The one where they install only, and not
> build, will do nothing with .la files, so fixed or not doesn't make any
> difference.
>

Right, so a few weeks later when they re-merge a binpkg, they suddenly
get build failures again. And that confuses them since it's
unexpected. This is in general a bad experience for stable users who
want to get work done, not baby-sit their system.

> The other, if they install back a built package might require another
> run of it,

Of course, that's the easiest solution. But I can't help but wonder
what kind of an impression it leaves on the users of our distro, who
use stable expecting it to not break unless absolutely required, and
with prior notice (or by accident, which is understandable).

Having said that, I was informed off-list that this is not meant to be
*the* solution for la file removal breakage, but merely an informative
notice to raise awareness for the (oft-useful) hammer that is
lafilefixer.

If the shortcomings of the tool (i.e. it doesn't fix vdb, binpkgs,
etc) are made clear in the news item, and devs do not start taking
this news item as license to unleash la file removal on stable, I have
no problems with it. Infact, I would say it's an injustice to users
not to get this news out to them ASAP.

So In short, (aiui) this news item is (or should be) "Some breakage
slipped in, if you face it and want a quick solution, do this: <blah>.
Note that it has the following problems: <list>. To minimize such
breakages in future, a feature called "fixpackages" (enabled by
default) has been added to ~arch portage, which will soon go stable
and will be accompanied by another news item"

Hmm, in retrospect that isn't short at all.

> I don't think it makes much difference though to them —
> beside making you feel righteous at dragging your feet. Nice try.
>

I'm sorry, but I do not understand your hostility. Could you rephrase
your objections with what I said in a way I can understand so that I
can address them?

Thanks

-- 
~Nirbheek Chauhan

Gentoo GNOME+Mozilla Team

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