On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 1:55 PM, Alan Mackenzie <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, Gentoo! > > Why are there so many packages whose versions never become stable? By > "many", I mean here at least two. :-) > > These are the kernel and Firefox. > > My kernel is currently 2.6.39-gentoo-r3, built on July 18. By examining > ebuilds, I now see that the ~amd64 is already up to 3.0.4-r1. I've > missed 3.0.[0-3], it seems.
The 2.6.x has stabilized versions. 3.x has been kept masked, because even though it isn't significantly different from the latest 2.6.x, a lot of tools were shown to fall apart when they see 3.x.y rather than 2.6.x. > My Firefox is on 3.6.20. Firefox 4 and 5 never became stable, and their > ebuilds have disappeared already. Firefox 6 is still ~amd64. No idea. I switched to chromium, partly as a result of that. (I wasn't comfortable unmasking things yet...) > Am I being unreasonable feeling a bit peeved? I really don't want to > have to guess which "unstable" versions are actually "stable enough". You want a fun one? Take a look at ekiga. > Is this phenomenom something new, or am I just new enough myself that > I've never noticed before? It's not new, I don't think, but it's somewhat dependent on the ebuild maintainer and changing conditions of the packages themselves. The kernel upstream broke things by changing its version numbering with little(?) warning. Firefox upstream has sorta broken things by switching to a rapid release cycle, and I suppose the ebuild maintainer hasn't caught up with the pattern shift. (Like anyone else who uses FF in an institutional setting has, either...) -- :wq
