unmasking/stabilizing silliness

I don’t understand users that complain when it takes awhile for something to be unmasked/stabilized. Gentoo developers will unmask or stabilize packages when they are ready, not before.

I have seen users ask when something will be unmasked/stabilized and complain when we say “when it’s ready”. When asked why they don’t just use package.unmask, package.keywords to unmask it themselves, they reply “I don’t want to break my system” or “I don’t like the idea of running unstable packages”. The thing that they apparently fail to grasp is that a keywording/unmasking by Gentoo developers isn’t some magical mark that makes a package stable. If we were to unmask or stabilize packages before they are ready just so users don’t have to “destabilize” their systems to run them, we would be destabilizing users’ systems just as much as if they had done it themselves. The only difference would be that everyone’s system is now broken, not just the impatient people’s systems.

If you see a somewhat obscure package sitting in ~arch for ages (not something like Gnome, KDE, X, Openoffice or anything else common) with no open bugs, it is possible that stabilizing it slipped a developers mind. In this case, a slight reminder (a bug or a poke on IRC) would be permissible (unless it’s a package that is at version 0.02 and has a tendency to crash with normal usage), as we do forget about packages sometimes.

Generally, for large or high profile packages, we do not forget about them, and there is a very good reason why they aren’t keyworded or unmasked. Often a search of bugzilla will tell you why something is taking so long. If you really want us to unmask or keyword a package faster, help work out the bugs that are preventing it from happening. Simply sitting on IRC/forums/mailing lists and complaining about it isn’t going to do anything except annoy developers. Filing stabilization bugs for packages that have open bugs waiting for a developer’s time is a good way to frustrate and/or piss off Gentoo developers, possibly making them decide they would rather be doing something else than fixing bugs to get your favorite package stabilized.