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pingtoo
Veteran
Joined: 10 Sep 2021
Posts: 1191
Location: Richmond Hill, Canada
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 Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2024 11:45 am Post subject: |
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To all Gentoo developer team,
I want to apology for my posts in this thread for them present the wrong idea of portage:profiles being static (or infrequent changes). It is my ignorance of assuming profiles content not change frequent therefor changes should be notified.
I checked online (github) saw in history the profiles directory got changed many time a day. So my assumption of being somewhere static is wrong. And my complements to Gentoo developer team you have created the illusion of static profiles this is very difficult. I worked in IT for more than 30 years in many different roles including being a developer I know it is very difficult to maintain an environment that not impact user and still carry on changes to support business objective.
Having said all of above, I still fell the changes to wayland/qt6 should have a good advance notices and I still maintain the idea of using the profile naming as a way to differential the prior state is better way to notify public.
I will open a new topic for discussion ideas to improve profiles concept. |
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asturm
Developer
Joined: 05 Apr 2007
Posts: 9234
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| Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2024 3:58 pm Post subject: |
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I doubt you have fully understood the implications of your proposal yet, and I highly recommend to read again my short summary of events around a toolkit upgrade and try to fully think your way into it.
Per your introductory disclosure, and just to provide the occasional snarky drive-by commenter with much needed context, maybe your "lived experience" simply is way too far removed from 99% of Gentoo users to really discuss these matters on an equal footing.
| pingtoo wrote: | | Disclosure, this profile state changes does not affect me, because my practice using Gentoo does not perform frequent changes. I only make new build from scratch when I feel I need. On occasion where I need additional function for my daily drive, I will just install the specific package(s) the satisfy my need. |
Think about that.
Since you have been visiting git already, and had a look at profiles subdir, you will surely have noticed what it is *a subdir of*: The ever rolling package repository. I invite you to re-read what I said earlier:
| asturm wrote: | | And that's what I mean with you cannot disconnect profile defaults from ebuilds at a given point in time ... |
With that settled, here is another attempt to make you understand *more*.
1) Major profile updates concern *every* Gentoo user. Manual steps are needed, and for that matter, long deprecation times are scheduled. There is no such thing as a "minor" profile upgrade.
2) A toolkit upgrade only concerns *part* of Gentoo user base. Server admins, minimalist WM users, will not care at all, Gnome desktop users will likely not care about Qt5 -> Qt6 *that* much, albeit many times they will use something Qt-based where there is no good GTK based alternative, and vice versa.
3) From the moment on where Qt6 becomes available, maintainers can make their application depend on it. *Most* of the time, that means a new Qt6-based version will replace a Qt5-based older version.
4) Where there has been a "qt5" USE flag in a package, it will be replaced by a "qt6" USE flag on more and more upgrades.
5) There is no way in a Gentoo system to express that "I want only Qt5-based versions of software". It would require manual version masking intervention in every single case. It is also highly unlikely that users of such applications would actually want that, since, as was mentioned already many times, Gentoo is a rolling release distribution, and Gentoo users will expect a constant flow of upgrades to the packages they are using. For stability concerns there is the arch/~arch keyword distinction. [A conservative binary distribution is your only way to really "freeze" the package repository. But still provide you with security upgrades. Think about that, too.]
6) What does that imply? When they upgrade, as they would naturally do, users relying on the desktop profile default of "qt5" will miss out on any features provided by "qt6" instead in subsequent package upgrades.
7) *Not* setting "qt6" also means users will face more and more conflicts because packages have dependencies, and these Qt6 application upgrades will need USE="qt6" support in various libraries.
8) What does that mean? Setting "qt6" in addition to "qt5" in this desktop profile represents the logical continuation of that profile, and not doing so would break expectations of its users.
Your proposal is a direct consequence of the way you seem to be using Gentoo: You stick a fork in it and basically leave it untouched, never syncing ::gentoo. And that is the only way how making an "opting into USE flag updates" would possibly work. But it is an impossible eat-cake-and-have-it-too proposal in the context of a rolling release distribution. |
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pingtoo
Veteran
Joined: 10 Sep 2021
Posts: 1191
Location: Richmond Hill, Canada
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| Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2024 5:04 pm Post subject: |
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asturm,
Thank you very much for spending effort for trying to make me understand.
| Quote: | | doubt you have fully understood the implications of your proposal yet, and I highly recommend to read again my short summary of events around a toolkit upgrade and try to fully think your way into i |
I did read that summary before my post. (although my post was constructed before that summary post. so I remote part of my post about not seeing any explanation). Feeling a little bit sad about you thinking me NOT able to understand things 
| Quote: | | Per your introductory disclosure, and just to provide the occasional snarky drive-by commenter with much needed context, maybe your "lived experience" simply is way too far removed from 99% of Gentoo users to really discuss these matters on an equal footing. |
For very first time you indicate you saw *all* my posts. And you understand where I came from.
It could very will be I am at other end of Gentoo user practice. However since there were more than just me that bring out the idea that they were "surprised" it surely mean someone have similar wish to get some form of stability. Admitting the "stability" may against current Gentoo practice.
May be my past post in thread seems to be criticism to developer. Please be sure that is not my intention. I just want to suggest to find a better way to get informed for changes.
May be my idea is not the best for ::gentoo:/profiles but can we even discuss it what else can be made to improve it? Many of your post in this thread come out as strait dismissal as in NO, this is wrong. I don't know if you notice that in my post one critical point is "notice", I said I wish this kind of changes will have notice so other can prepare for it and my propose a way to do this notice in hope that is minimal effort (You have prove me I am wrong about the "minimal effort")
I will respond to some of your point to indicate I do read and trying to understand.
| Quote: | | From the moment on where Qt6 becomes available, maintainers can make their application depend on it. *Most* of the time, that means a new Qt6-based version will replace a Qt5-based older version. |
I will presume at the point of Qt6 becomes available, the "qt6" USE flag is not necessay in profile mask list? And if it did get into mask list at earlist but because it is "masked" so no one will notice and here is my point of given it out notice.
| Quote: | | What does that mean? Setting "qt6" in addition to "qt5" in this desktop profile represents the logical continuation of that profile, and not doing so would break expectations of its users. |
However I don't see why not. have a minor additional profile does not break the continuation of the profile. it on the other hand give other a chance to choose.
Please note above just arguments they are not saying the idea in the argument are appropriate, it is mean to provoke thoughts to help discussion.
I need to break again to step out for lab examine. I think I will stop respond in this thread because I am over take OP for no good reason. should you wish to discuss more I invite you to the other topic Ideas for Portage:/profiles for further conversation. |
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asturm
Developer
Joined: 05 Apr 2007
Posts: 9234
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| Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2024 5:11 pm Post subject: |
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| pingtoo wrote: | | I will presume at the point of Qt6 becomes available, the "qt6" USE flag is not necessay in profile mask list? And if it did get into mask list at earlist but because it is "masked" so no one will notice and here is my point of given it out notice. |
Maybe this is a language barrier but I have no idea what you are trying to say here.
| pingtoo wrote: | | However I don't see why not. have a minor additional profile does not break the continuation of the profile. it on the other hand give other a chance to choose. |
There is no choice because Qt6-based ebuilds are replacing Qt5-based ebuilds!
| pingtoo wrote: | | Feeling a little bit sad about you thinking me NOT able to understand things :D |
You don't understand why, when you are repeating wrong assumptions about things that were laid out to you in bold? |
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finoderi
n00b
Joined: 29 Oct 2021
Posts: 64
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| Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2024 5:28 pm Post subject: |
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The main displeasure people expressed is not that changes happen (although there were a bit of that too), but that they happen silently. And it would be nice to know more about them.
It's obvious having profile names like '23.2.5-2.45.z4-7-7984' wouldn't be much better as well. |
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asturm
Developer
Joined: 05 Apr 2007
Posts: 9234
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| Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2024 5:37 pm Post subject: |
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| finoderi wrote: | | but that they happen silently |
But they don't. There is emerge --ask.
And by the way: We only have this discussion in the first place because of making the "mistake" of versioning the qt USE flag, unlike GTK where it can mean anything from 2 to 4. |
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lars_the_bear
Guru
Joined: 05 Jun 2024
Posts: 493
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| Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2024 6:42 pm Post subject: |
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| asturm wrote: | | finoderi wrote: | | but that they happen silently |
But they don't. There is emerge --ask.
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I guess 'silent' for me means 'unannounced' or, perhaps, 'unexpected'. I installed Gentoo on one machine with a particular profile, then two weeks later on a different machine using the same profile, I expected them to be 'the same', and they weren't.
If I'd known that such a thing could happen, I guess I would have taken precautions to avoid it causing the amount of hassle that it did.
If your use of Gentoo is non-mainstream, then I think you need a really, really thorough understanding of how the version management system works. I don't think you get that from fighting Gentoo on a daily basis -- it's something that needs to be studied. I don't know if the documentation exists that would allow for such study, and still be comprehensible to a new user. To be honest, I don't know that I would have read it, even if it did.
Stll, I do think it would help if the installation guide said right at the beginning:
"Gentoo is very customizable, but it's much easier to install and maintain if you leave as much as possible at defaults. If you want to make any significant changes, here's this hundred-page document on Portage you must read first."
BR, Lars. |
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