On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 09:35:44PM -0700, Ryan Tandy wrote
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >On Thursday 04 May 2006 05:27 pm, Walter Dnes wrote:
> >
> >> Gentoo ~x86 (or ~whatever) is roughly equivalant to a mix of Debian
> >>"Testing" and "Unstable". A package may be ~ simply because it hasn't
> >>been tested enough yet to certify as stable. Or it may be horribly
> >>broken. Or somewhere in between. If you were comfortable running
> >>Debian unstable, you'll be comfortable running Gentoo ~x86.
> >>
> Actually, this isn't quite true. The difference between arch and ~arch
> is strictly a Gentoo difference - packages aren't shifted from
> package.mask to ~arch until they're considered stable by upstream.
> ~arch is the Gentoo testing branch: where the ebuild is refined and
> where the code is patched if it breaks due to crazy C(XX)FLAGS, USE, etc.
>
> Packages where the *code* (as opposed to the *ebuild*) is still
> considered unstable and which may actually break things badly are left
> in package.mask.
There isn't a 100% exact mapping like..
Gentoo-~arch => Debian-Testing
Gentoo-masked => Debian-Unstable
It's a mixture. Even "an ebuild-related problem" can cause brokeness.
"The consequences" are...
1) More liklihood of strange bugs/breakage
2) You will *NOT* get bug-support here or in bugzilla.gentoo.org for
packages marked as ~arch
--
Walter Dnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> In linux /sbin/init is Job #1
My musings on technology and security at http://tech_sec.blog.ca
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