[gentoo-dev] aging ebuilds with unstable keywords - how can we help?

[Richard Fish]

On 7/2/06, Daniel Ahlberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Hi,

This is an automatically created email message.
http://gentoo.tamperd.net/stable has just been updated with 15968 ebuilds.


A question [1] has come up on -user about why some ebuilds take so
long to become stable for an arch.  This isn't the old when will we
have KDE yesterday.3am type question.  In reviewing the above
database, and the OP, it looks like a fair number of ebuilds that
could/should be stable are not.

Of particular concern to me are packages that:

a) have no open bugs.
b) are marked stable on some archs, but not others.
c) may have only a single version available in portage.

As an example, consider net-analyzer/etherape, which is ~amd64 ppc
sparc x86, and has no open bugs (other than a version bump request),
and only a single version available in portage to begin with.

So my question is: is there anything that interested users can do to
help here?  I know we can file stabilization bugs, but I agree with
Robert [1] that this should not be necessary in the normal case.
Besides, do you _really_ want 16,000 new bug reports that say nothing
more than blah/foo works for me, please stabilize!  Is the problem a
lack of time, devs, arch testers, or interested users?

Regards,
-Richard

[1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/166565/focus=166565
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Re: [gentoo-dev] aging ebuilds with unstable keywords - how can we help?

[Drake Wyrm]

Richard Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 A question [1] has come up on -user about why some ebuilds take so
 long to become stable for an arch.
snip
 So my question is: is there anything that interested users can do to
 help here?  I know we can file stabilization bugs, but I agree with
 Robert [1] that this should not be necessary in the normal case.

Stabilization bugs are not a bad thing.

Speaking from a pure QA standpoint, they _should_ be the normal case.
There should be a tracker bug for each ebuild which users can tag with
works for me! and have tested thoroughly reports.

On the other hand, that's a bit much red tape for most devs, so they
don't do that when it's not useful. When it _is_ useful, go for it. If
you've been using a package for a while and you think it's ready for
primetime, use the available reporting mechanism and say so.

 [1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user/166565/focus=166565

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