Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: deprecation of baselayout-1.x
Nirbheek Chauhan wrote: On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 11:03 AM, Dalerdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: William Hubbs wrote: As a user, if a person hasn't upgraded in about 6 months, they may as well reinstall anyway. That is usually the advice given on -user. After a year without updating, it is certainly easier and most likely faster to reinstall. Except for the fact that while you upgrade, you still have a usable system. Reinstallation means a massive time-sink during which your machine is completely unusable. This is not an option for a lot of people. If -user is regularly giving that kind of advice, I think you guys are making a huge mistake. I'm not going to support this kind of max-6-month-upgrade life cycle for Gentoo. We're effectively driving our users away to distros like Ubuntu that allow you to upgrade every LTS release instead of constantly or every 6 months. Well, it has been done. A while ago, if I recall this correctly, someone hadn't updated in about a year. He tried to upgrade but ran into issue after issue. After a couple days, he ended up reinstalling. It just depends on what updates have come along that causes issues. I think things are better than they used to be but sometimes, it is faster to just reinstall and be done with it. It's either spend a day or more dealing with problems or spending a day getting a fresh start. As for not having a system, I have one when I do my install. I just boot Knoppix and use it. I can use a web browser to follow the docs and check email. It's one of many ways to install Gentoo. It's not about what Gentoo supports, it's about what is faster, easier or at times, both. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: deprecation of baselayout-1.x
On Thu, 30 Jun 2011, William Hubbs wrote: Please discuss. Did I leave out any steps? Are there any points I have left out besides the time window between steps 2 and 3? Should there be a time window before removing baselayout-1? What about between steps 1 and 2? What do you consider to be a reasonable time window before we stop supporting migration from baselayout-1 to baselayout-2/openrc? I'm thinking on the order of a few months, but not years. We have a policy on this, see http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/meeting-logs/20091109-summary.txt: | Upgrade path for old systems | | Vote (unanimous): The ebuild tree must provide an upgrade path to a | stable system that hasn't been updated for one year. So the time window should be at least one year after stabilisation of baselayout-2 and openrc. Ulrich
Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: deprecation of baselayout-1.x
On 07/01/11 07:56, Nirbheek Chauhan wrote: On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 11:03 AM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: William Hubbs wrote: As a user, if a person hasn't upgraded in about 6 months, they may as well reinstall anyway. That is usually the advice given on -user. After a year without updating, it is certainly easier and most likely faster to reinstall. Except for the fact that while you upgrade, you still have a usable system. Reinstallation means a massive time-sink during which your machine is completely unusable. This is not an option for a lot of people. I'd call myself an affected user in this context: As (lazy) administrator of some servers (hardened) and desktops (stable), both virtualbox servers and guests, as well as an x86 binhost vm for the laptop, and the only requirement of keep-it-working, I'm doing the upgrades somewhat seldom: up to 1.5 years, especially for the hardened servers. As I don't care for compilation time (the servers are up 24/7), my thought to still allow for a somewhat stable upgrade path: Regularly (twice a year?) take a tree snapshot to keep around (infra? releng?), and provide some mechanism (eselect?) to pick such an old snapshot instead of the current (rsync) one. Then, run each (half-year) update within a couple of days... Maybe the tree snapshots are there already within the live-cds: Do we aim to provide an upgrade path from one live-cd snapshot to the next one? /haubi/ -- Michael Haubenwallner Gentoo on a different level
Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: deprecation of baselayout-1.x
On Fri, Jul 01, 2011 at 08:38:38AM +0200, Ulrich Mueller wrote: On Thu, 30 Jun 2011, William Hubbs wrote: Please discuss. Did I leave out any steps? Are there any points I have left out besides the time window between steps 2 and 3? Should there be a time window before removing baselayout-1? What about between steps 1 and 2? What do you consider to be a reasonable time window before we stop supporting migration from baselayout-1 to baselayout-2/openrc? I'm thinking on the order of a few months, but not years. We have a policy on this, see http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/meeting-logs/20091109-summary.txt: | Upgrade path for old systems | | Vote (unanimous): The ebuild tree must provide an upgrade path to a | stable system that hasn't been updated for one year. So the time window should be at least one year after stabilisation of baselayout-2 and openrc. To clarify then, we can do everything except remove the migration code from the openrc ebuilds. That step needs to wait until 28 Jun 2012 right? William pgpLF4mqYSCei.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: deprecation of baselayout-1.x
On Fri, 1 Jul 2011, William Hubbs wrote: We have a policy on this, see http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/meeting-logs/20091109-summary.txt: | Upgrade path for old systems | | Vote (unanimous): The ebuild tree must provide an upgrade path to | a stable system that hasn't been updated for one year. So the time window should be at least one year after stabilisation of baselayout-2 and openrc. To clarify then, we can do everything except remove the migration code from the openrc ebuilds. That step needs to wait until 28 Jun 2012 right? If that is sufficient for providing an upgrade path, then yes. Ulrich
Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: deprecation of baselayout-1.x
On 11:26 Fri 01 Jul , Nirbheek Chauhan wrote: Except for the fact that while you upgrade, you still have a usable system. Reinstallation means a massive time-sink during which your machine is completely unusable. This is not an option for a lot of people. If -user is regularly giving that kind of advice, I think you guys are making a huge mistake. I'm not going to support this kind of max-6-month-upgrade life cycle for Gentoo. We're effectively driving our users away to distros like Ubuntu that allow you to upgrade every LTS release instead of constantly or every 6 months. In my experience, updates become massively difficult after about 6 months unless you have deep expertise in Gentoo. You run into blocker after blocker after USE-flag problem after resolution failure and an ongoing series of confusing messages with no apparent end in sight. We may call it supported (and technically, we're right) but it isn't realistically possible for most users. After handing over administration of about 10 systems to someone else with less experience in Gentoo, I still get called in about once every couple of months to help every time one of these weird problems comes up. I recommended upgrades to the new admin every 3 months, which is a point where nearly everything still works cleanly. -- Thanks, Donnie Donnie Berkholz Sr. Developer, Gentoo Linux Blog: http://dberkholz.com pgpbxhlF9Fgwu.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: deprecation of baselayout-1.x
On Fri, Jul 01, 2011 at 09:08:53AM -0500, Donnie Berkholz wrote: On 11:26 Fri 01 Jul , Nirbheek Chauhan wrote: Except for the fact that while you upgrade, you still have a usable system. Reinstallation means a massive time-sink during which your machine is completely unusable. This is not an option for a lot of people. If -user is regularly giving that kind of advice, I think you guys are making a huge mistake. I'm not going to support this kind of max-6-month-upgrade life cycle for Gentoo. We're effectively driving our users away to distros like Ubuntu that allow you to upgrade every LTS release instead of constantly or every 6 months. In my experience, updates become massively difficult after about 6 months unless you have deep expertise in Gentoo. You run into blocker after blocker after USE-flag problem after resolution failure and an ongoing series of confusing messages with no apparent end in sight. We may call it supported (and technically, we're right) but it isn't realistically possible for most users. Right. I can't tell you how many times I've seen on -user where someone comes back after not upgrading for longer than 6 months and finds themselves in a very tricky situation. Since we have a council decision that says the migration path has to exist for a year, that's what I'll follow. However, if someone waits a year to upgrade a gentoo system, things will have changed so much that the upgrade process will be challenging for them to say the least, unless they know gentoo very well. William pgp1ZvZDk6LjB.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: deprecation of baselayout-1.x
William Hubbs wrote: On Fri, Jul 01, 2011 at 09:08:53AM -0500, Donnie Berkholz wrote: On 11:26 Fri 01 Jul , Nirbheek Chauhan wrote: Except for the fact that while you upgrade, you still have a usable system. Reinstallation means a massive time-sink during which your machine is completely unusable. This is not an option for a lot of people. If -user is regularly giving that kind of advice, I think you guys are making a huge mistake. I'm not going to support this kind of max-6-month-upgrade life cycle for Gentoo. We're effectively driving our users away to distros like Ubuntu that allow you to upgrade every LTS release instead of constantly or every 6 months. In my experience, updates become massively difficult after about 6 months unless you have deep expertise in Gentoo. You run into blocker after blocker after USE-flag problem after resolution failure and an ongoing series of confusing messages with no apparent end in sight. We may call it supported (and technically, we're right) but it isn't realistically possible for most users. Right. I can't tell you how many times I've seen on -user where someone comes back after not upgrading for longer than 6 months and finds themselves in a very tricky situation. Since we have a council decision that says the migration path has to exist for a year, that's what I'll follow. However, if someone waits a year to upgrade a gentoo system, things will have changed so much that the upgrade process will be challenging for them to say the least, unless they know gentoo very well. William I been using Gentoo since about 2003, old 1.4 days, and I wouldn't try to upgrade after six months unless there has been very few major changes. I may would sync and see what it looks like but if I see several blockers or some major upgrade, like expat if I recall correctly, then it would be a fresh install for me. So, I'm a long time Gentoo user and I been around the block a few times and I certainly know where to get help, but even with all that between my ears, I still say it is faster to start over. If in say the past three months there have been a few major upgrades, I would do the same. If in 9 months it has just been normal upgrades, then I would try it. It all depends on what has changed and how much time it would take to work through the problem. Now if you have some very complicated server setup, then that may be different. At that point you would have to put in the balance what is easier and faster, upgrade or re-install. Generally, emerge -ep world | genlop -p plus time to configure everything again versus time needed to work through the upgrade, which there is no certainty of. That's the balance. Having the world file and some needed files from /etc would make things a lot faster too. Balance. Just don't fall off the scale. lol Dale :-) :-)
[gentoo-dev] rfc: deprecation of baselayout-1.x
All, the time has come when baselayout-2.x and openrc are stable on all of our architectures. That means that we should look into removing baselayout-1 from the tree, removing support for it from our init scripts and removing support for migration from the openrc ebuilds. 1. we can remove baselayout-1 from the tree, I think, as soon as bug #368597 is closed, because once that is done, all new installs should be based on baselayout-2.x and openrc. 2. The next step is to reverse the changes we made in bug #273138 and any other init scripts that have been reacting differently depending on whether they were under baselayout-1 or openrc. Optionally we could rework init scripts to take advantage of openrc specific features such as the *_pre/post functions at this point. Once this is completed, the init scripts in portage will not support baselayout-1, so if anyone is still on baselayout-1 we should find a way to encourage them to migrate -- maybe a news item? Also, we should come up with a time window that will be published in this news item that will mark the end of supporting migration from baselayout-1 to openrc. 3. The final step is to remove the code from the openrc ebuilds that supports migrating from baselayout-1.x. Once we do this another news item should be published since this is the point of no return; anyone running a baselayout-1 based system will have to re-install to upgrade once we drop this support. Please discuss. Did I leave out any steps? Are there any points I have left out besides the time window between steps 2 and 3? Should there be a time window before removing baselayout-1? What about between steps 1 and 2? What do you consider to be a reasonable time window before we stop supporting migration from baselayout-1 to baselayout-2/openrc? I'm thinking on the order of a few months, but not years. Thanks, William pgpe1aEgTfPwn.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: deprecation of baselayout-1.x
William Hubbs wrote: All, the time has come when baselayout-2.x and openrc are stable on all of our architectures. That means that we should look into removing baselayout-1 from the tree, removing support for it from our init scripts and removing support for migration from the openrc ebuilds. 1. we can remove baselayout-1 from the tree, I think, as soon as bug #368597 is closed, because once that is done, all new installs should be based on baselayout-2.x and openrc. 2. The next step is to reverse the changes we made in bug #273138 and any other init scripts that have been reacting differently depending on whether they were under baselayout-1 or openrc. Optionally we could rework init scripts to take advantage of openrc specific features such as the *_pre/post functions at this point. Once this is completed, the init scripts in portage will not support baselayout-1, so if anyone is still on baselayout-1 we should find a way to encourage them to migrate -- maybe a news item? Also, we should come up with a time window that will be published in this news item that will mark the end of supporting migration from baselayout-1 to openrc. 3. The final step is to remove the code from the openrc ebuilds that supports migrating from baselayout-1.x. Once we do this another news item should be published since this is the point of no return; anyone running a baselayout-1 based system will have to re-install to upgrade once we drop this support. Please discuss. Did I leave out any steps? Are there any points I have left out besides the time window between steps 2 and 3? Should there be a time window before removing baselayout-1? What about between steps 1 and 2? What do you consider to be a reasonable time window before we stop supporting migration from baselayout-1 to baselayout-2/openrc? I'm thinking on the order of a few months, but not years. Thanks, William As a user, if a person hasn't upgraded in about 6 months, they may as well reinstall anyway. That is usually the advice given on -user. After a year without updating, it is certainly easier and most likely faster to reinstall. Almost everything will be updated and there is usually a few upgrades that are touchy and will have to be dealt with. My thoughts, after a year, baselayout1 could be laid to rest. At that point, a reinstall would be the easiest and fastest anyway. Just a users perspective. YMMV. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: deprecation of baselayout-1.x
On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 11:03 AM, Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: William Hubbs wrote: As a user, if a person hasn't upgraded in about 6 months, they may as well reinstall anyway. That is usually the advice given on -user. After a year without updating, it is certainly easier and most likely faster to reinstall. Except for the fact that while you upgrade, you still have a usable system. Reinstallation means a massive time-sink during which your machine is completely unusable. This is not an option for a lot of people. If -user is regularly giving that kind of advice, I think you guys are making a huge mistake. I'm not going to support this kind of max-6-month-upgrade life cycle for Gentoo. We're effectively driving our users away to distros like Ubuntu that allow you to upgrade every LTS release instead of constantly or every 6 months. -- ~Nirbheek Chauhan Gentoo GNOME+Mozilla Team
