{"id":8,"date":"2006-11-14T17:49:31","date_gmt":"2006-11-14T17:49:31","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-10-15T03:19:20","modified_gmt":"2010-10-15T03:19:20","slug":"unmasking_stabilizing_silliness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/chutzpah\/2006\/11\/14\/unmasking_stabilizing_silliness\/","title":{"rendered":"unmasking\/stabilizing silliness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>I have seen users ask when something will be unmasked\/stabilized and complain when we say &#8220;when it&#8217;s ready&#8221;. When asked why they don&#8217;t just use package.unmask, package.keywords to unmask it themselves, they reply &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to break my system&#8221; or &#8220;I don&#8217;t like the idea of running unstable packages&#8221;. The thing that they apparently fail to grasp is that a keywording\/unmasking by Gentoo developers isn&#8217;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&#8217;t have to &#8220;destabilize&#8221; their systems to run them, we would be destabilizing users&#8217; systems just as much as if they had done it themselves. The only difference would be that everyone&#8217;s system is now broken, not just the impatient people&#8217;s systems.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>Generally, for large or high profile packages, we do not forget about them, and there is a very good reason why they aren&#8217;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&#8217;t going to do anything except annoy developers. Filing stabilization bugs for packages that have open bugs waiting for a developer&#8217;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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;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 &#8220;when it&#8217;s ready&#8221;. When asked why they don&#8217;t just use package.unmask, package.keywords &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/chutzpah\/2006\/11\/14\/unmasking_stabilizing_silliness\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">unmasking\/stabilizing silliness<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/chutzpah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/chutzpah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/chutzpah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/chutzpah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/chutzpah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/chutzpah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/chutzpah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/9"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/chutzpah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/chutzpah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gentoo.org\/chutzpah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}