On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 10:52 AM, William Hubbs <willi...@gentoo.org> wrote: > My understanding of p.mask is it is never permanent. Things go in > there until they get fixed or eventually removed.
I disagree with this. In my opinion, it is fine to have permanently masked packages in some cases. I don't really care what the existing documentation says on this; documentation can be updated. > p.masked packages do not directly benefit from any forms of qa (eclass > fixes, etc). > > I don't think, for example, we test eclass changes to see if they > break masked packages. > > Also, as far as I know, we don't use p.masked packages as a > way to keep eclasses in the tree do we -- for example, (I haven't looked > at the code), but I'm guessing that a number of these packages use > games.eclass which is on the way out. If we say we can't get rid of > these packages, we may not be able to get rid of games.eclass. Agreed. If the ebuild has no hope of working at all, there is no point in keeping it in the tree. It should not hold up removal of obsolete eclasses. > It is unlikely as well that masked packages are actively maintained at > all, especially those that have been setting in the tree masked for > multiple years. You are basically asking that we keep bitrotting broken > packages in the tree. If the package is unmaintained and broken, then it should be removed. However, there are cases where the package is usable and has been masked for some other reason, security being the obvious example.
