Nirbheek Chauhan <nirbh...@gentoo.org> posted 8b4c83ad0904091106w1dd21b30v8d98c528d02de...@mail.gmail.com, excerpted below, on Thu, 09 Apr 2009 23:36:16 +0530:
> On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 10:15 PM, Tiziano Müller <dev-z...@gentoo.org> > wrote: >> roughly 90% packages depending on one of: >> >> sys-libs/db > > Why the hell does this have so many slots in-tree? I am unaware of the > reasons for it. Horribly changed API every release? How does every other > distro handle sys-libs/db ? Yes, they specifically don't maintain API thru minor version numbers (tho AFAIK they do for micro, third field). Most other distributions are binary and release only periodically, not the "rolling update" Gentoo does, so they can declare a target db version for a release and build everything to it. >> Besides: We wouldn't need the need_python_rebuild anymore, users could >> safely uninstall old sys-libs/db versions, old dev-libs/boost versions > > @preserved-libs. More generic, a low-level catch-all for library > breakages, and more convenient for users (rebuild as and when possible, > not *right now* lest everything break). Honestly I'm wondering if that's going to end up a "failed experiment" much like confcache. Many of us users anyway running portage 2.2 turned off that feature right away, as it was breaking more stuff than it fixed. OTOH, since I turned it off as too much trouble for the small gain, I've not been tracking it so closely. Maybe the bugs are all pretty much resolved... But it's not something I expect to be turning on again right away. Once burned twice shy, and all that... tho I admit I'd value it much higher if my system was on the slow side instead of the fast side. And as a ~arch user that often answers questions stable users have that I dealt with six months or whatever ago, I'm not especially optimistic that /I'm/ not going to be seeing bugs based on it. That being the case, I can only imagine the headache it would threaten were I a bug wrangler or package maintainer actually having to deal with those bugzilla entries. Like I said, I have visions of confcache just thinking about it. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
