Richard Fish wrote: > 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?
The problem is in the system. Unless you are a developer _and_ part of the arch team you cannot do anything but file a bug and wait and wait and wait until a member of the arch team decides to test the package again for his own and mark it stable. So with the current system the arch teams cannot cover all the packages. I would say for your litle pet package to get stable you have little chances. And you would not want it stable anyway, because stable marking usually lacks behind the bugs of the package. That means you most certainly will hit the bugs and a month later when someone has filed a bug _and_ the package herd or developer has said yes _and_ a developer from the arch team has tested it the bug will be stable, too. As a better system I would like to see packages stable automatically after 30 days and no bugs. But this is probably not going to happen with gentoo so I just stay away from stable and put ACCEPT_KEYWORDS in my make.conf Things you can do for stabilization to go better: - file a lot of bugs and wait - become an arch tester and test packages to recommend them for stabilization. Of course they still need testing by a developer in the team then. - look for developers and ask them to comment on stale bugs to get them solved To get involved the best way is maybe to show up in IRC in the arch team channel like #gentoo-x86. Best regards, Stefan -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
