How can a ebuild be stable?

hans_da · n00b Joined: 09 Mar 2007 Posts: 64

The general problem is that, there are lots of packages in portage keeping unstable for years. I wonder who and how to decide whether one package is not unstable anymore. As far as I've seen, whenever something new comes out, it is unstable. When there is important bug, it is unstable. But this unstable can be kept for years in portage, while the upstream has long claimed the stability. There are many such examples especially in sci-* trees. One can hardly find stable packages there, and lots of packages are definitely usable enough for a long time. So why not just make them stable?

eccerr0r · Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2008 6:25 pm Post subject:

"usable enough" is subjective...

I suppose you agree with most of the scientific/engineering world (me included) that tools tend to have some bugs and miss corner cases, but still "good enough". The problem is that most of the developers aren't in that mindset, and crashes/minor bugs are not really acceptable... as well as the fact they may not have a clue what the tool is used for, and how to use it -- so how do they test? A lot of the time, a large consensus is needed, and many of these tools do not have as wide of a user base like something such as Mozilla.

I don't mind the packages left in unstable, it's not too hard to unmask them (and mask newer versions should they become available).
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2008 6:39 pm Post subject:

hans_da,

The general rules for a backage to become stable are :-
No open bugs and no bug reports for 30 days
No dependancies on other unstable packages
Well tested.

Unfortunately, some packages have very few users, like those in the sci-* trees.

Stable in Gentoo not only means the installed packahe is stable, the ebuild is stable too.
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tanderson · Retired Dev Joined: 11 Apr 2007 Posts: 193

Thing is, us arch teams(Yes, I'm one of those to blame

), need to hear from someone that it's been in ~arch for 30 days and works fine. If you file bugs asking a package to be stabilized most arch teams will do it after proper testing(At least my team will, amd64).

If you want to help out the teams that do this sort of stuff in the long run, you can become an Arch Tester; They help us do a lot of the testing that is a prerequisite for an ebuild going into the stable branch.
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