On Wednesday 04 November 2009 01:11:39 Ryan Hill wrote: > On Tue, 3 Nov 2009 23:28:57 +0100 > > Patrick Lauer <patr...@gentoo.org> wrote: > > And then why bother when the tree doesn't reflect PMS. > > Maybe if some people would stop ignoring PMS on whim because they don't > agree with something in it this wouldn't be the case.
Well, we have at least one prior discussion and a year of precedent on the bash 3.0 / 3.2 thing. Since there were no sanctions for doing it, there's no way to break things with it (because you have a recent enough bash guaranteed) and it is very convenient people started using it. After a year of use (and getting used more and more) I just don't see how any sane person can think about forbidding it NOW. It's too late. We've moved on. You missed your chance. FEATURES has been used in ebuilds for a loooong time. People were happy with it. The only reason it was not properly documented in PMS was because the authors didn't agree with it. That's not how you do a standard, but then it never was about documenting reality. Now PMS has this hole in it, and instead of (1) documenting current behaviour and (2) agreeing on a standard behaviour while (3) keeping the historical errata documented ... well, it's kinda, look over there ... *runs away* Not a way to discuss or write a standard, also making things complicated when there are known easy ways to fix it. > > Like, when does this end? Whenever there's a policy you don't agree with, > you do whatever you want? And it's the policy that's the problem? > Well, if everyone else freely ignores it and pointing out that people violating the policy has no response I'll consider that policy inactive. If the Gentoo developers vote with their feet I'm not going to pretend they didn't. What you can do then is document what just happened ... maybe ... optionally? > Anyways, this has nothing to do with PMS. Using FEATURES in the tree was > frowned upon long before it even existed. The fact that it wasn't > documented as such outside of mailing lists and bug reports is the real > bug. > And that usage was tolerated for >2 years. I still don't see what's bad about using things as they are, but if people now decide that we need to do complex dances instead of fixing things I'll just grab a camera and tape it instead of complaining. Life is too short to get worked up about such things :)
