On Tue, 20 Aug 2013 15:41:42 -0400 Rich Freeman <ri...@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > Let me dig up an example...
> >
> > Our last sys-kernel/gentoo-sources stabilization was 3 months ago:
>
> I don't really see a problem with stable package being all of 3 months
> old. Contrast that with youtube-dl which pull from ~arch and rebuild
> about 3x/week.
For something that releases once to twice a week, it is a problem;
we're not talking about a package that gets some slow commits here, no,
let's run `git log --oneline v3.8.13..v3.10.7 | wc -l`: 28233
That's a lot of commits; now you need to realize that every single
commit in this means something, a lot of them are bug fixes (stability,
security, reliability, anti corruption, ...) whereas of course a part of
it also introduces parts of new features and refactoring.
Desktop users might not care for all of these, but sysadmins will;
actually, that's what this thread is about, they are switching to ~
because of things like this. Who are we stabilizing for then?!
> If somebody needs a newer kernel they can run it.
Upstream has advised people that people must upgrade 3 months ago...
> I needed something so I accepted <3.10, and it looks like I'll either
> have to accept <3.11 now or just live with 3.9 until stable catches
> up. I don't really see a problem with either unless I'm looking to
> fix some particular bug.
This last paragraph has nothing to do with stabilization; we shouldn't
expect users to define stable themselves, also note that not all bugs
are visible. So, we can't just be careless and wait another month...
While this is a large scale example, the same happens in smaller scale
to other packages; I don't mean to focus on the kernel, but rather use
it as an example to show the underlying problem:
Bitrot due to a lack of resources.
--
With kind regards,
Tom Wijsman (TomWij)
Gentoo Developer
E-mail address : tom...@gentoo.org
GPG Public Key : 6D34E57D
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