This is a public service announcement that the recently stabilized
portage version will truncate you repo's git history to 1.
While this is a good thing for the majority of Gentoo users, it affects
developers that develop in a git known to portage (like me). If I
understand the portage maintainers vision correctly, then future portage
will assume full control over its configured repositories and
potentially perform destructive operations on them, for example "git
clean" [1].
I personally would prefer portage simply adjusting its behavior based on
the owner of the repository. That is, if it's the 'portage' user then
assume full control, and if it is a different user, then fall back to a
preserving, conservative mode of operation. Unfortunately, for me, this
idea was received skeptically at best in a recent discussion in
#gentoo-portage.
So this is a heads up for fellow developers using a similar workflow
like me, that they are probably required to change their workflow to use
PORTDIR_OVERLAY and multiple repositories on their system: a
system-wide, managed by portage, and a dev repository (in your HOME),
scoped in via PORTDIR_OVERLAY.
As everyone knows, there is nothing better than to change the workflow
that has served you well over multiple years. But apparently the
PORTDIR_OVERLAY approach works well for others, so I am confident that I
(and others) will be able to make the transition with a minimal amount
of ranting. ;)
- Flow
1: https://github.com/gentoo/portage/pull/939
