On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 1:57 AM, Markos Chandras <[email protected]> wrote:
> Not removing old packages does *NOT* violate the policy.

And this is why nobody likes lawyers.  :)

Leaving around old packages because of a desire to avoid a policy
doesn't really strike me as an example of exemplary QA either.  There
are lots of good reasons to keep a few versions of a package in-tree.
None of them should be used merely as excuses to avoid running the
"echangelog" command.  I could see foot-dragging over a policy that
requires refactoring many ebuilds or something, but the Council tends
to avoid things like this precisely because they are onerous.
Personally I tend to just run echangelog for everything anyway - it is
easier to changelog a trivial change than to spend half a week on -dev
debating anybody who questions whether it is trivial.  Besides, I
spend much of my career working on systems that won't commit anything
without a documented "reason for change" - the changelogs on these
systems typically grow to fill 75% of the entire databases.  Gentoo is
like a breath of fresh air...

The one thing I hope doesn't come out of this is a Council that is
even more reluctant to act out of fear of being slapped around by the
community anytime a developer threatens to quit.  Sure, we can't
really afford to lose people, but we can even less afford a system
where any one person can just hold the entire endeavor hostage.  If we
think that tweaking the changelog policy causes pain, just wait to see
how the git migration goes.  Sometimes individual devs just need to
see which way the wind is blowing and do their part to make sure we at
least end up anywhere other than going in circles...

Rich

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