-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Frank Peters wrote: > In a lot of cases, for example perl, Xorg, and gcc, the Gentoo > distribution lags far behind the latest available releases. > Even allowing the "~amd64" unstable series, this remains true. > Why is this so? > > I had first considered moving to Gentoo in the fall of 2008, > but after noticing that the only version of gcc available at > that time was gcc-3.x, I postponed the change. In the spring > of 2009, Gentoo finally moved up to gcc-4.3.x and then I made > the transition. But the update to the 4.3 series was a long time > in coming. > > The latest perl, released some time ago, is version 5.10 but > Gentoo includes only 5.8.8. > > The latest Xorg has restructured certain libxcb dependencies, > which has caused a lot of problems for a lot of packages, > and Gentoo is behind these changes as well. > > (Ironically, it was this libxcb issue as well as the whole Xorg > modularity mess that first motivated me to seek out Gentoo.) > > Now I am not actually voicing a complaint. Gentoo, IMO, is still > the best distribution for Linux. I am just wondering why there > is such a great lag before a package version is deemed stable -- or > even unstable. In my experience with maintaining my own Linux system, > I never had any great issues with always installing the latest "bleeding" > edge software. > > Frank Peters
For inclusion to stable portage tree, I think a year or two is nothing to be concerned of. If you need the most bleeding edge version, there is nothing to stop you from installing the package yourself directly from upstream. In most cases, unless you used a specific package extensively AND is having problems with the supplied package AND you know a more recent version fixes the problem, you don't really need the newest version. If you met all those conditions, the mess of manual install would be worthwhile. If you're one of the people that wants to be on the bleeding edge, just because; then you should really become a tester. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAko3KfQACgkQqC3FTmXeMUZdhgCeIm5Ek7dsj3CknfBcD9bICuTD Rz4An3R4s59gZXBwRV7aeuz5JYraV5bX =cR2q -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
