On 10/02/2011 11:40 PM, Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn wrote: > Mike Frysinger schrieb: >> the system is functioning wrongly because you're forcing users to needlessly >> upgrade/downgrade packages. in addition, packages in the tree aren't the >> only >> things to be considered. if the user is building code that works fine >> against >> the latest stable, but your package forced it to downgrade, they might no >> longer build correctly. > > Then the code is broken that is built outside portage and does not > function correctly with old linux-headers without doing any kind of > version check.
That too, no doubt about it, but that doesn't invalidate what Mike already said. > And again, downgrade of dependencies it is not against any rule which > would justify mask and removal. > > Another example from the X.org packages, installing the proprietary > ATI/NVidia drivers will cause downgrades for xorg-server on ~arch > systems. Nobody in his right mind is proposing to treeclean them because > of this. > The new xorg-servers could get package.masked until these major drivers are available. Albeit, I'm not intrested in pursuing this since with separate xorg-server package, it's the drivers that need rebuilding against it, and the VIDEO_CARDS="" setting is keeping it in certain version until the VIDEO_CARDS="" setting is satisfied. Poor example to make a case. >>>> further, when the newer version gets stabilized and then the older ones >>>> dropped, what then ? your package is broken. >>> >>> Yes, when the older one is dropped _that_ would be reason for >>> masking+removal. However I have not seen any plans of doing so. Actually >>> the current amd64 stable 2.6 versions are 35, 26 and 10 months old >>> respectively, I wouldn't expect that to happen any time soon. >> >> sorry, but that's irrelevant. the lack of tree-cleaning is more due to >> missing automatic generation of ChangeLog files. but if this is going to be >> a >> sticking point for you, i can simply clean the tree as soon as we get newer >> stable versions. > > If the old versions and reverse dependencies are dropped in accordance > with > http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml?part=2&chap=5#doc_chap7 > then I won't complain. The intresting part of that document is "You should also not cause an unnecessary downgrade for any "~arch" when ..." which also applies to setting dependencies just as well.
