On Thursday 13 November 2003 00:17, Eamon Caddigan wrote: > Jason Stubbs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Nice to hear that you got your problem fixed the correct way. For > > future reference, the file /etc/portage/package.{mask,unmask} are only > > for adding/ removing from/to /usr/portage/package.mask. If a package > > has KEYWORDS="~x86" and you have ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86", changing the > > above files wont make a bit of difference. > > Ahh, that makes sense. Now I wonder if the lack of documentation on this > feature is intentional. I saw some talk on the forums about this feature > being "for developers only".
Well, I don't know about that. What I can say though is that no user should ever unmask something that is hard-masked unless they are fully prepared to fix it him or herself and that NO bug reports should be submitted. It is hard-masked because it is known to be buggy.
In fact, many developers don't like the average user running ~arch at all. Many users run ~arch just to have the latest and "greatest" but aren't prepared to handle any problems that may occur and end up just slowing down the development process which would get packages out of ~arch and into arch quicker. But how to teach a user to differentiate him or herself...
Debian's "unstable" branch is pretty much equivalent to "~x86" and but it's very, very popular. Why ?? Same reason you state: Users want "the latest and greatest", but they want it in the convenience of a "package". You really can't blame us (the users). :-)
Then again, in many cases you can grab just the particular package you want (and maybe a dependency or two) from ~x86 and be fine. It's when you update gcc, glibc, and so on that you're treading on dangerous ground.
Hall
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