On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 8:41 PM, Duncan <1i5t5.dun...@cox.net> wrote: > AFAIK, gentoo policy is that live ebuilds should always be masked so as > never to be automatically pulled in without a deliberate unmasking of the > live ebuild, but whether that's masked due to lack of keywords (ebuild), > or due to hard-mask (package.mask) is I believe up to the maintainer.
The policy apparently disappeared in the shuffling of documentation which occurred over the years. But here is what I was instructed to teach recruits back when I became a recruiter in 2006 or 2007, and what competent developers have been doing since even before I was a developer: The package.mask file is only for temporary masking, even if more or less long term. Anything that should be permanently masked has no place in the tree. Live ebuilds should not be keyworded, reflecting the fact that the code they're pulling has not be tested for any architecture due to it being live. Moreover, live ebuilds should not be masked as this results in unnecessary cruft in the package.mask file. Denis.
