On Sat, Apr 23, 2011 at 04:02:24AM -0700, Zac Medico wrote: > On 04/22/2011 11:05 PM, Eray Aslan wrote: > > https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364445 > > https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=364401 > > > > Basically, there are requests to add packages to RDEPEND in virtual/mda > > and virtual/mta that are not in the official tree but in sunrise. > > > > On one side, *DEPENDing on a package outside the tree doesn't seem > > right. Additionally, keeping track of all the overlays and their > > package versions, USE flags and flag changes are potentially too much to > > track. We will be making changes to a virtual package without testing > > whether it works. > > I would assume that it's the overlay maintainers' responsibility to test > and report any problems. Any such problems would should affect the > overlay users, so it shouldn't cause any regression for users who don't > choose to use the overlay. > > > On the other hand, we are making life (unneccesarily?) difficult for > > overlay users by not incorporating the requested changes to the official > > tree. > > I don't imagine it's that much work to maintain a fork of the virtual. > It's just an inconvenience for users since the version from the overlay > might become temporarily outdated and cause problems with dependency > resolution.
I would prefer that the virtual maintenance still happen in the main tree whenever possible. In this case, the virtual's maintainer seems willing to add the package atoms to the virtual -- the only concern was whether or not it was allowed to *DEPEND on atoms known not to be in gentoo-x86. So the answers I've read all add up to a "yes, go ahead". Encouraging overlays to maintain their own virtual replacements would be encouraging more people who are not familiar with a particular virtual to mess with it in their own repositories. Also, if multiple overlays each need to add a single but different DEPEND to a particular virtual, the user will end up with only one of these virtual overrides. Someone who overrides a virtual in an overlay would thus be expected to take into account other overlays which provide candidates for that virtual. Having overlay maintainers do this would be much more of a mess than letting one person manage the gentoo-x86 virtual and get everything done right once and without duplication of effort. -- binki Look out for missing or extraneous apostrophes!
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