Suggestions to help the tree...

[gsfgf]

For the record, i've only had one ebuild fail in a very long time and i remerged that one without making changes and it worked, so i'd say QA is working pretty damn well. and i am using ~arch.
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Aim:gsfgf0

[()]

Would some sort of automated testing environment be possible, so that ebuilds can be verified (unit testing) before inclusion? Perhaps some sort of simulated merge, skipping time consuming parts such as compilation.

[Lowspirit]

First of all, what is the current procedure for an ebuild to go through before reaching the official tree (in any state, ~, masked or otherwise) ?

I think the unrealistic idea of having a donated farm of boxes test ebuilds is a nice utopian idea, a couple of 10-20 or so distributed boxes that do something like this :

1. Check for errors manually (bash, ebuild, etc)
2. Emerge
3. (if success) Unmerge and report success to online database
4. (if failure) E-mail ebuild maintainer / update some online web database with all necessary information (logs, env, etc) making reported info flawless every time.

I could donate some old box for the cause and I don't think I'm alone in that, QA of ebuilds should be a high priority and having it somewhat automated would be a positive thing.

This would ofcourse require some verification process software/script thingy being written but I don't see that as being a problem, and if done right it could be made pretty fast so errors that slip through could be compiled, detected and reported within an hour or so of reaching general population.

The distributed part of the verification process could queue new unverified stuff and distribute it to all the test boxes making it a fairly smooth process, AND portage could get a hookup to ebuilds so if I (for example) wrote "emerge net-rhythmbox --verified" it would hookup to that online database and give a "This ebuild has been verified 2003-04-05 by box 004 etc etc blah blah"... am I rambling?

...go gentoo?
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"Penguins are the only fish that can fly"

[mtangolics]

I'm almost afraid to post due to the beginnings of a flame war, but the only suggestion I can really think of is to clarify masking a bit, and more clearly define when to, and when not to mask.