Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Re: When will KDE 3.5 be marked as stable?
060505 Diego 'Flameeyes' Petten? wrote: Although modular, KDE 3.5 has to go stable _at once_ and if KMail is totally broken or has major feature loss, we can't. I've seen this stated before, but why does it have to be _at once_ ? Many packages have 1 stable version available, so users might have KDE 3.4.3 (all) 3.5.1 (parts) by now, with the rest of 3.5.1 then some of 3.5.2 to follow soon. Also, KDE can be divided up among = 7 downloadable .bz2's. I have 6 of them for the packages I use -- base games libs edu graphics utils -- there is also kdepim , which would be needed for the problematic Kmail etc . Any stable version of KDE will need kdelibs kdebase , but otherwise why can't the packages be made stable at least as each big downloadable file becomes ready, if not individually ? -- ,, SUPPORT ___//___, Philip Webb : [EMAIL PROTECTED] ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Centre for Urban Community Studies TRANSIT`-O--O---' University of Toronto -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Re: When will KDE 3.5 be marked as stable?
On 5/5/06, Carsten Lohrke [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All the whining leaves me with the feeling that I'm less interested to work for you. The question What can I do? I do never hear. Stop whining, but decide to help or give another distro a try. These are your choices. Just to try to counter some of the whining, I am sure that most users do appreciate the work that you do for little glory and even less pay. And I think you did the right thing by holding off on stabilization this long. Yeah, I know, not as good as a how can I help?, but my day job is keeping me busy with 60 hour weeks atm Cheers, -Richard -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Re: When will KDE 3.5 be marked as stable?
On Saturday 06 May 2006 08:48, Philip Webb wrote: I've seen this stated before, but why does it have to be _at once_ ? Because 3.4 and 3.5 does _NOT_ mix together! Many packages have 1 stable version available, so users might have KDE 3.4.3 (all) 3.5.1 (parts) by now, with the rest of 3.5.1 then some of 3.5.2 to follow soon. KDE 3.5.1 is no more in portage, a part those packages which haven't changed with 3.5.2 and akregator that seems to have problems with 3.5.2 version, at least here. Any stable version of KDE will need kdelibs kdebase , but otherwise why can't the packages be made stable at least as each big downloadable file becomes ready, if not individually ? Because they have to be stable at once. Period. Can't go stable piece by piece. Period. Can't. Period. -- Diego Flameeyes Pettenò - http://farragut.flameeyes.is-a-geek.org/ Gentoo/Alt lead, Gentoo/FreeBSD, Video, AMD64, Sound, PAM, KDE pgpS8yVVPWCRv.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Re: When will KDE 3.5 be marked as stable?
060506 Diego 'Flameeyes' Petten? wrote: On Saturday 06 May 2006 08:48, Philip Webb wrote: I've seen this stated before, but why does it have to be _at once_ ? Because 3.4 and 3.5 does _NOT_ mix together! That's not an explanation: it merely restates your assertion. Many packages have 1 stable version available, so users might have KDE 3.4.3 (all) 3.5.1 (parts) by now, with the rest of 3.5.1 then some of 3.5.2 to follow soon. KDE 3.5.1 is no more in portage, a part those packages which haven't changed with 3.5.2 and akregator that seems to have problems with 3.5.2 version at least here. Sorry, your sentence doesn't make sense as English. Any stable version of KDE will need kdelibs kdebase , but otherwise why can't the packages be made stable at least as each big downloadable file becomes ready, if not individually ? Because they have to be stable at once. Period. Can't go stable piece by piece. Period. Can't. Period. Again, you're simply repeating yourself without any attempt to explain. Can anyone else offer an explanation for the claim that all KDE packages (for one version) have to be stabilised together ? -- ,, SUPPORT ___//___, Philip Webb : [EMAIL PROTECTED] ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Centre for Urban Community Studies TRANSIT`-O--O---' University of Toronto -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Re: When will KDE 3.5 be marked as stable?
Philip Webb wrote: Any stable version of KDE will need kdelibs kdebase , but otherwise why can't the packages be made stable at least as each big downloadable file becomes ready, if not individually ? Because they have to be stable at once. Period. Can't go stable piece by piece. Period. Can't. Period. Again, you're simply repeating yourself without any attempt to explain. Can anyone else offer an explanation for the claim that all KDE packages (for one version) have to be stabilised together ? Look - every such mail defers stabilizing KDE, it's getting really annoying. No, they can't and won't be stabilized on a piece-by-piece basis, that would result in failed dependencies and compilation failures. Period, no need to discuss this. This has never been done, can't be done now and won't be done in future. The whole KDE shebang needs to go stable at once, together with many other non-KDE ebuilds that it depends on. So please, stop wasting limited time of limited number of Gentoo KDE maintainers by beating a dead horse. TIA. -- Best regards, Jakub Moc mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG signature: http://subkeys.pgp.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0xCEBA3D9E Primary key fingerprint: D2D7 933C 9BA1 C95B 2C95 B30F 8717 D5FD CEBA 3D9E ... still no signature ;) signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
[gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Re: When will KDE 3.5 be marked as stable?
Michael Kirkland wrote: I think the problem is that Gentoo is falling into the same sandtrap the Debian project has been mired in forever. arch and ~arch are polarizing into stable, but horribly out of date, and maybe it will work. This leads to people trying to maintain a frankenstinian /etc/portage/package.keywords file, constantly adding to it and never knowing when things can be removed from it. I would suggest opening a middle ground tag, where things can be moved to from ~arch when they work for reasonable configuration values, but still have open bugs for some people. That way, people who prefer stability over the latest features can run arch, and everyone who bitches about packages being out of date can run the middle tag, and ~arch can be kept for testing. I really, really agree here. I know this seems like a flamewar but it is starting to annoy me. There are several packages that are several months behind the official releases. I am going to name some of them: Firefox 1.5: 5 months (the entire world uses it now, in stable) KDE 3.5.2: 1.5 months (I know our devs get prereleases, so we had this time) Xorg 7: 5 months I know we have a lot of work to do, but I have some concerns. How long are we going to maintain old packages? KDE 3.4.3 is no longer supported by the KDE developpers. Firefox extensions for 1.0 are becoming extinct. You are also getting a lot of work trying to fix bugs in old software. Most probably you are starting to backport bugfixes, is this the way we want things to go? I understand you don't care about how many users you have, Gentoo is not a bussiness. But if I try to convince users about the current situation that is hard. I can't explain this, I really can't. My only answer is put it in /etc/portage/package.keywords. But that one is growing very fast... One nice thing for users would be the addition of more metabugs for recent packages. I'd like to know why some packages are not stable, and I am not the only one. Adding a metabug instead of closing all requests for stabilization with wontfix/wontresolve is much more userfriendly. Once again, I love to use Gentoo but I don't understand the current situation. I have the feeling that I'm not the only user so I posted these comments in order to discuss them. Hopefully you don't mind trying to explain it all... Bart -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Re: When will KDE 3.5 be marked as stable?
On Fri, May 05, 2006 at 09:20:08AM +0200, Bart Braem wrote: Michael Kirkland wrote: I think the problem is that Gentoo is falling into the same sandtrap the Debian project has been mired in forever. arch and ~arch are polarizing into stable, but horribly out of date, and maybe it will work. This leads to people trying to maintain a frankenstinian /etc/portage/package.keywords file, constantly adding to it and never knowing when things can be removed from it. I would suggest opening a middle ground tag, where things can be moved to from ~arch when they work for reasonable configuration values, but still have open bugs for some people. That way, people who prefer stability over the latest features can run arch, and everyone who bitches about packages being out of date can run the middle tag, and ~arch can be kept for testing. I really, really agree here. I know this seems like a flamewar but it is starting to annoy me. There are several packages that are several months behind the official releases. I am going to name some of them: Disclaimer: I maintain none of the packages you mentioned, so these are possible reasons, there may be other more important reasons that I didn't think of. Firefox 1.5: 5 months (the entire world uses it now, in stable) The ebuild itself causes problems with LINGUAS because of a portage bug (or limitation). And on IRC just yesterday two devs complained about Firefox because for one, 1.5 was unacceptably slow, and for another 1.5.0.3 took 100% CPU. Additionally, the latest stable is 1.0.8, which was released less than a month ago; the 1.0 versions are still maintained. KDE 3.5.2: 1.5 months (I know our devs get prereleases, so we had this time) kdelibs-3.5.2 needed fixes and workarounds for miscompilations and crashes less than a month ago, according to the changelog. Xorg 7: 5 months Strange behaviour for some with virtual/x11 being provided when it shouldn't be, causing missing dependencies for other ebuilds, and compilation issues. I know we have a lot of work to do, but I have some concerns. How long are we going to maintain old packages? KDE 3.4.3 is no longer supported by the KDE developpers. Firefox extensions for 1.0 are becoming extinct. You are also getting a lot of work trying to fix bugs in old software. Most probably you are starting to backport bugfixes, is this the way we want things to go? I understand you don't care about how many users you have, Gentoo is not a bussiness. But if I try to convince users about the current situation that is hard. I can't explain this, I really can't. My only answer is put it in /etc/portage/package.keywords. But that one is growing very fast... One nice thing for users would be the addition of more metabugs for recent packages. I'd like to know why some packages are not stable, and I am not the only one. Adding a metabug instead of closing all requests for stabilization with wontfix/wontresolve is much more userfriendly. Searching for open and recently closed bugs about the packages in question can help a lot in figuring out reasons packages aren't marked stable. As for metabugs, they would help if the package maintainers feel software is almost ready to go stable and just want to finish up the remaining issues, but in other cases, why? How does it help? Once again, I love to use Gentoo but I don't understand the current situation. I have the feeling that I'm not the only user so I posted these comments in order to discuss them. Hopefully you don't mind trying to explain it all... Bart -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Re: When will KDE 3.5 be marked as stable?
Bart Braem wrote: Xorg 7: 5 months Can't stabilize till portage 2.1 is stable. Doesn't matter how many open bugs we've got, or how well it works. Thanks, Donnie signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Re: When will KDE 3.5 be marked as stable?
On Friday 05 May 2006 09:20, Bart Braem wrote: KDE 3.5.2: 1.5 months (I know our devs get prereleases, so we had this time) Now I think we really explained that well enough, we're working to mark it stable as soon as we can. *We don't care if you wanted it stable yesterday, it will be stable when it's ready to go stable.* And before people start thinking we got 3.5.2 months before it was released, the prereleases are three days before final release, they are _not_ for testing purposes, they are for binary distributions to prepare packages and for us to prepare ebuild, and a build run kind of test to make sure there are no obvious problems. Although modular, KDE 3.5 has to go stable _at once_ and if KMail is totally broken, or has major feature loss (it had), we can't go stable. Now, we're going to stable this as soon as it's possible, but making us lose time on this is something you don't want, as that takes time to the bugs resolution. If you really want, you use ~arch directly, I'm doing that since I started using Gentoo, and works as a charm for me. -- Diego Flameeyes Pettenò - http://farragut.flameeyes.is-a-geek.org/ Gentoo/Alt lead, Gentoo/FreeBSD, Video, AMD64, Sound, PAM, KDE pgpMzCgd5jtjT.pgp Description: PGP signature
[gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Re: When will KDE 3.5 be marked as stable?
Jeff Rollin posted [EMAIL PROTECTED], excerpted below, on Fri, 05 May 2006 06:28:53 +0100: Or maybe we could move to a fixed release cycle. Debian uses 18 (?) months, but maybe a 3- or 6-month release cycle would suit us better Actually, Gentoo already has that, altho the period is still getting tweaked occasionally. That's what the 200X.Y releases are, with the LiveCDs and stages, and the PackagesCD with its precompiled stuff, for those who want to go that route. In 2004, there were four quarterly releases, 2004.0-2004.3. In 2005, they reduced that to two semi-yearly releases, 2005.0 and 2005.1 (with a 2005.1-r1 coming out soon after, with limited changes fixing limited bugs). In 2006, the target is again two releases, the first of which, 2006.0, has already occurred. Thus, it looks as if the 6-month cycle seems to be suitable for the time being. Of course, one of the big benefits to Gentoo is that it's not the jerky upgrade/wait/upgrade cycle other distributions tend toward, but more a continuously upgraded system, with the periodic snapshot releases simply being exactly that, snapshots of the tree that have been fairly well tested on a particular arch and found to work reasonably well as a place to start. Once the system is up and going, the assumption is that folks will update at least a time or two between snapshot releases, with many updating twice weekly to daily. The more frequently you update, generally, the smoother the updates will be, because it won't be such a big jump all at once. Within that system, what's stable at the particular snapshot date gets tested and included in the stages, and live and packages CDs. There is of course some push to get stuff stable by a particular release, but that pressure hits Gentoo sponsored and targeted projects like portage and baselayout the hardest, with the vast majority of packages affected more by the timing and releases upstream than by Gentoo's snapshot releases. That's part of what makes Gentoo Gentoo. To change it changes the Gentoo we know into something else -- /not/ the Gentoo we know. I doubt you'll find much support for significant change among Gentoo devs /or/ users, because after all, if they didn't like it, they'd not have chosen Gentoo in the first place, as that's one of the defining characteristics that makes Gentoo what it is. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master. Richard Stallman in http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Re: When will KDE 3.5 be marked as stable?
I understand you don't care about how many users you have, Gentoo is not a bussiness. But if I try to convince users about the current situation that is hard. I can't explain this, I really can't. My only answer is put it in /etc/portage/package.keywords. But that one is growing very fast... One nice thing for users would be the addition of more metabugs for recent packages. I'd like to know why some packages are not stable, and I am not the only one. Adding a metabug instead of closing all requests for stabilization with wontfix/wontresolve is much more userfriendly. I read and see that your intentions are good. The KDE team is currently made of about 3 semi active people. Our speed is simply limited by the amount of time and resources we have to put into maintenance. I won't argue stability and ~keywords and whatnot, as it's somewhat of a matter of opinion and interpretation. But I will say this: if anyone feels as though something has stalled or wants some explanation as to why the distribution isn't moving in a certain direction, then your message should be tagged with the following words: How can I help? Get involved. It's the only way you will truly understand the magnitude of a project like Gentoo. KDE is a very small slice of the whole thing, and yet it still requires a LOT of time. We're always looking for help. If you need a place to start, pick out a bug report and try and fix it. You might spend 3-4 hours chasing the answer. 3-4 hours. Can you imagine sitting in front of your computer for 3-4 hours to solve a problem for someone you don't know for no compensation? And you may never even figure it out! So let's rephrase why doesn't Gentoo have ZZZ into how can I help Gentoo have ZZZ?. Become empowered. That's what will keep the distribution great. Caleb My guess is that KDE 3.5.2 is probably ready for stabilization, but nobody has the time to do it at the moment. That's purely a guess, though. Feel free to open a stabilization tracker bug for it so we do have a place to discuss it. -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
[gentoo-dev] Re: Re: Re: When will KDE 3.5 be marked as stable?
Philip Webb posted [EMAIL PROTECTED], excerpted below, on Fri, 05 May 2006 03:37:06 -0400: That's very much my own impression. I am now using ~x86 versions of Vim Vim-core Gvim Cdargs Openoffice Eix Euses Gqview Gwenview Portage Firefox Galeon Htop KDE -- all of which which I use regularly -- Abiword Gnumeric Koffice Gnugo Qgo Qalculate-kde (which I rarely use). I have had no problem with any of them. My solution is a line in .bashrc : 'alias emergeu='ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=~x86 emerge' , which allows me to emerge a testing version on a specific occasion. The package.keywords alternative is silly, as there's no reason anyone would want to do it regularly for a package, as opposed to occasionally when -- increasingly -- stabilisation is late. I do a weekly 'eix-sync' check the list of packages which have changed, then decide which ones to update; I never do 'emerge world'. I keep an upto-date file with a line for each package I have installed, incl date, version the main dependencies it satisfies (if any): this is my alternative to 'world', which is clumsy causes problems. I have been doing this since I started using Gentoo in Oct 2003 have never had any problem with Portage or packages as a result. Here, I simply use ~amd64 for my entire system, and rarely have problems. When I do, that's what those backup snapshot partitions I keep around are for. Gentoo is really fairly conservative with ~arch. That does /not/ mean the package is broken, or the upstream package is unstable. Rather, it means the upstream package is reasonably stable, and the Gentoo ebuild is known to work and is tested at least by the Gentoo maintainer. Really broken packages and packages known to have very serious issues on Gentoo aren't ~arch at all, but are instead hard-masked, either with the -* keyword, or with an entry in package.mask. Given these facts, I'm of the opinion that most of those running stable that are calling for faster package stabilization, should really be running ~arch. That's doubly true for those finding they have an ever-growing package.keywords and/or those calling for a middle keyword. In point of fact, ~arch /is/ that middle keyword, because the really unstable packages are hard-masked and not in ~arch in the first place. Actually, I run selected hard-masked packages as well. Particularly with things like gcc, which is slotted and easily managed with gcc-config or eselect compiler, it's quite easy to run hard-masked stuff in parallel. Something like xorg isn't as easy to run in parallel as it's not slotted, but even there, given FEATURES=buildpkg, if one has the time and motivation to test a masked version, it's relatively painless to revert to an old version if the test doesn't work out so well (with the caveat of course that one keeps backups, as one should anyway, in case something goes /really/ wrong -- it IS hard-masked packages we are talking about now, after all). Again, I don't see the problem. Stable is there for those that want it. ~arch is there for those that want something newer, with a bit of extra risk. Hard-masked-for-testing packages are very often there for those who REALLY want bleeding edge -- along with the associated increase in risk. If folks don't like how far behind stable is, and are willing to risk not only their own systems with the package in its current state, but the systems of everyone else running stable (which is what requesting faster stabilization actually comes down to), they shouldn't be running stable after all, but the middle keyword, that being ~arch. That way, they get their newer, mostly stable programs, while everyone who /really/ wants stable doesn't end up with the risk of stabilizing the package too fast. Of course, note that package.keywords works both ways. Folks running ~arch as their regular keyword can set specific packages to arch (stable) in package.keywords too. Again, Gentoo is very flexible in that regard -- some might say insanely flexible, but it works, if people would only read the docs and follow them as appropriate. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master. Richard Stallman in http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
