arch and/or packages.mask

[ikshaar]

Hi,

I didn't get the point of the new system with ~arch against the previous packages.mask.

I want to keep my system stable, so I can't use ~arch as it allows upgrade of ALL unstable packages. But on the other hand, I would like to use some not yet finished packages as grdesktop (for example) when I need them. But I cannot unmasked it, as it is not in packages.mask listing. I could do an ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" but in that case emerge will use unstable dependencies without telling me which ones are unstable and which are not.

So I don't want to sound conservative but I missed the overall usefullness of the new keyword !! and i feel stuck to use only the official released packages now.
_________________
"May God stands between you and harm in all the empty places where you must walk" - Babylon 5

[pjp]

The overall usefullness would be for those that want to bungee jump with a fraying cord.

If you pretend the ~arch options didn't exist, then you'd not have to worry about trying packages that won't unmask, since they are probably too unstable.

What you could try, is this.

[ikshaar]

I tried that but ...

[lx]

Using keywords you can do more then using the package.mask, so I think the package.mask is probably obsolete, but I've asked the same question in another post.

But the way I see it you could use "~~x86" for very unstable etc, some packages have -x86, which run fine on my system, but maybe that's the flag for very unstable or something, so why should you use a package.mask file, it's very crude and you can't differ between different architectures. In my opinion the KEYWORDS mechanism can do the same and more as the package.mask file and with time it will get obsolete.

But I might be (/probably am) overlooking something, correct me plz,

Cya lX.
_________________
"Remember there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.", Frank Zappa

[rac]

[ikshaar]

That would be nice to have some insights about what is this "-x86" keyword, and an overall idea of how are managed packages now (non-working, unstable,dangerously unstable,useable, stable,etc...).

packages.mask used to give me some insights (few I agree but still) about what was going on and why some packages were still masked. Don't get me wrong, I know ~arch keyword is more powerful than the mask file. I just want to understand a little bit more, the announce on the homepage of Gentoo is quite "limited" and I did not find any thread containing more infos about it.
_________________
"May God stands between you and harm in all the empty places where you must walk" - Babylon 5

[lx]

It would be nice to have some info where portage is heading, maybe even some discussion on it (well there's probably some development list / irc channel ps. I haven't looked for it). But the files in /var/db/pkg make it seem portage is heading already in the right direction, but just as "-x86" we can only guess, well it keeps it xciting every time you update portage, not disappointed yet,

Cya lX.
_________________
"Remember there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.", Frank Zappa

[Hypnos]

Hi, I hope y'all don't mind a new addition to an old thread ....

I just want something simple, three levels of categorization for packages: stable, testing, unstable. "Stable" is what stable is now, "unstable" is for pre-release/unstable software, and "testing" is for stable (likely newly released) software but new/untested ebuilds.

For example, I want to use XFree86 4.3.0 as stable, released software, but the ebuild is still masked. I imagine something similar will occur when the GTK2 Evolution and Galeon come out -- this is an annoyance. I'd rather not use unstable software, but I don't mind trying out ebuilds for released software I'd like to use.

Thoughts?


PS: I have never used or administered Debian, so I'm not trolling!

[absinthe]

[adrenalin]