Free-standing Portage / Recent stage3 tarballs / Beta
 

Hi Gentoo-

My overall impression of Gentoo is "what a fantastic system"! I can't
believe how good, really. These are all fairly minor things. I'm new
to Gentoo, so forgive dumb ignorance, but Linux and programming are my
profession.

For your 2008.0 release:

The 2007.0~ppc branch fails to upgrade over a Bash / Portage block. So
will 2008.0 break too, until attended? A Bash / Portage conflict is the
worst possible.

I tried to fix it (from zsh chroot into Gentoo) but gave up. Stock
advice on FAQs does not work in this thorny case. Forums show
occasional situations between Python / Portage, too.

I do not want/ask your help, but only to share a thought:

Portage should have embedded Python and embedded Bash. Exactly the
versions it needs, with bare minimum required libraries, statically
compiled.

The Portage 'snapshot' is already a special install step. And Gentoo
already ships regular snapshots. The only thing missing is embedding
the dependencies directly.

I've never embedded Bash, but have Python, several times. Bash could
probably work too. The combined ELFs weigh around 2 MB total, not bad
for a critical executive controller like Portage which has its own
dedicated snapshots.

Finally - how about some recent stage3 ~arch tarballs. I can't find
any. Most distros do daily/weekly/monthly build snapshots. The only
snapshots for Gentoo seem to be Portage snapshots. Am I wrong? I know
the 2008.0 beta is due soon, but I mean on a continuous basis. Not
binary builds, just the latest ~arch tarball. If not frequent, at least
quarterly?

Normal ppc 2007.0 works fine from a dependency standpoint. The entire
reason for trying Gentoo is that ppc boxes need the absolute most
bleeding edge of everything. Hence the interest in Gentoo and
specifically ~arch. We also want the latest GNOME anyhow, plus
compiz-fusion.

Would it be best to wait a month until beta, or is it reasonable to
install ~arch right now? A few bugzilla contributions from us might
help the beta project but deadly bash/Portage conflicts are a little too
thick for my taste right now...

Thank you!
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Free-standing Portage / Recent stage3 tarballs / Beta
 

davecode@nospammail.net wrote:

Hi Gentoo-

My overall impression of Gentoo is "what a fantastic system"! I can't
believe how good, really. These are all fairly minor things. I'm new
to Gentoo, so forgive dumb ignorance, but Linux and programming are my
profession.

For your 2008.0 release:

The 2007.0~ppc branch fails to upgrade over a Bash / Portage block. So
will 2008.0 break too, until attended? A Bash / Portage conflict is the
worst possible.


No. The 2008.0 stages will have whatever versions of packages are in the tree at
the time of our snapshot.



I tried to fix it (from zsh chroot into Gentoo) but gave up. Stock
advice on FAQs does not work in this thorny case. Forums show
occasional situations between Python / Portage, too.

I do not want/ask your help, but only to share a thought:

Portage should have embedded Python and embedded Bash. Exactly the
versions it needs, with bare minimum required libraries, statically
compiled.


No. That's not feasible when you start looking at all the architectures that
Gentoo is supported on.



The Portage 'snapshot' is already a special install step. And Gentoo
already ships regular snapshots. The only thing missing is embedding
the dependencies directly.

I've never embedded Bash, but have Python, several times. Bash could
probably work too. The combined ELFs weigh around 2 MB total, not bad
for a critical executive controller like Portage which has its own
dedicated snapshots.


Those snapshots have nothing to do with the Portage program. They are simply
snapshots of the "tree".



Finally - how about some recent stage3 ~arch tarballs. I can't find
any. Most distros do daily/weekly/monthly build snapshots. The only
snapshots for Gentoo seem to be Portage snapshots. Am I wrong? I know
the 2008.0 beta is due soon, but I mean on a continuous basis. Not
binary builds, just the latest ~arch tarball. If not frequent, at least
quarterly?


The stage tarballs are *never* ~arch. We have talked about doing automated
builds, but we're not releasing them for public consumption, since there will be
absolutely *zero* QA done on them.



Normal ppc 2007.0 works fine from a dependency standpoint. The entire
reason for trying Gentoo is that ppc boxes need the absolute most
bleeding edge of everything. Hence the interest in Gentoo and
specifically ~arch. We also want the latest GNOME anyhow, plus
compiz-fusion.


Uhh, why exactly do PPC boxes need the newest everything?


Would it be best to wait a month until beta, or is it reasonable to
install ~arch right now? A few bugzilla contributions from us might
help the beta project but deadly bash/Portage conflicts are a little too
thick for my taste right now...


That particular blocker isn't exactly hard to get around. There are a few
threads in the forums (and I'm sure on the gentoo-user mailing list) that talk
about it.


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Free-standing Portage / Recent stage3 tarballs / Beta
 

> The 2008.0 stages will have whatever versions of packages
> are in the tree at the time of our snapshot.

Right; that's also what I meant about rolling stage3's. The only
difference being that much more careful attention is paid to the
official release tarballs, stripping out blockages and the like.


> not feasible when you start looking at all the architectures

Hm.

Portage runs Python bytecodes and bash scripts. Those are portable.

The interpreters themselves need zero platform optimization for a
bootstrap ("stage3 install"). They can target generic x386 and ppc etc.
Just like any commercial software vendor.

Following which users could recompile on their targets, if desired or
required. Exotic targets could just do it the old way.


> That particular blocker isn't exactly hard to get around.

For you...but it cost me half a day, then defeat. Please consider that
QA feedback. The FAQs failed. I don't even want to know how to fix
this. To me, the fix is to embed the interpreters.


> The stage tarballs are *never* ~arch. We have talked about doing automated
> builds, but we're not releasing them for public consumption, since there will be
> absolutely *zero* QA done on them.

Of course not; I didn't mean you replace official releases with ~arch!
I only meant that, like Debian et al, there be regular tarballs for
eager testers. That seems more sensible that starting testing from a
year-old tarball. Some others might test in kexec/vmware/chroot or
whatever.

> why exactly do PPC boxes need the newest everything?

Sigh. I'd rather not go there. Suffice to say ~arch is why we're here.
The current ~arch is turning into 2008.0 anyway, so that's what where
we can help QA Gentoo.

Thanks again.
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Free-standing Portage / Recent stage3 tarballs / Beta
 

> we'd never release ~arch tarballs

I'm talking testing, you're thinking stable...

Testers by definition do not want old stuff. The reason they are
testing is they want new stuff. Yes, they understand the risk. In
Debian they use "unstable" and "experimental" branches.

Some big distros even vector off "unstable," such as Ubunutu. So I am
not alone in this...

The rolling stage3 suggestion isn't that Gentoo checks everything. The
servers just spit them out. The idea is that Gentoo give testers more
recent ~stage3's than year-old tarballs which are not even marked ~arch.
No SVN/CVS etc. Our explicit interest is testing - not stable
releases! Even when you ship 2008.0 we'll be on ~arch.

Having just gone through days of testing with 2007.0, and upgrading to
~ppc, I'm just trying to offer some constructive feedback. Linux
projects want testers and developers, in general. The way to attract
testers is lowering barriers to entry.


> I think your idea of how Gentoo releases work is a bit skewed.
> Everything comes from stable. Always.

I'm not clear how I said otherwise? Well, okay, straighten me out ...
My understanding is

* Gentoo has two parallel ongoing branches, arch and ~arch
* ~arch has more recent packages than arch but less stability
* both branches keep upgrading over time with bug/security/feature fixes
* the only stage3 tarballs that exist are for the previous mega public
release
* Gentoo releng team plants a pole in the ground and ~arch becomes arch
"beta"
* arch "beta" quickly turns into arch-stable, while a new ~arch forks
ahead

Corrections welcome...Anyway, rolling testing tarballs for ~arch was the
idea.

Rolling tarballs for both arch and ~arch together is no more work than
one or the other. It would be the same automated stuff.

Thanks for a wonderful distro and the work on 2008.0.
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Free-standing Portage / Recent stage3 tarballs / Beta
 

Hi,

davecode-Nbr/4NovP0l9pMjJd8zWoA@public.gmane.org:
> > we'd never release ~arch tarballs
> I'm talking testing, you're thinking stable...
> Testers by definition do not want old stuff. The reason they are
> testing is they want new stuff. Yes, they understand the risk. In
> Debian they use "unstable" and "experimental" branches.

We have to think of people that install the first time or rely on
having a stable system, they need arch as it is tested. A fixed and
tested status has the pro of having less problems for Newbies.

> > I think your idea of how Gentoo releases work is a bit skewed.
> > Everything comes from stable. Always.
> I'm not clear how I said otherwise? Well, okay, straighten me out ...
> My understanding is
> * Gentoo has two parallel ongoing branches, arch and ~arch

Correct.

> * ~arch has more recent packages than arch but less stability

Correct.

> * both branches keep upgrading over time with bug/security/feature
> fixes

Correct. This is done by teams per architecture, have a look at
<URL:http://devmanual.gentoo.org/keywording/index.html>.

> * the only stage3 tarballs that exist are for the previous mega public
> release

Correct.

> * Gentoo releng team plants a pole in the ground and ~arch becomes
> arch "beta"

No. There is a snapshot taken which contains the packages stable at
the moment of shooting.

> * arch "beta" quickly turns into arch-stable, while a new ~arch forks
> ahead

We don't have an immediate switch, the parts of the tree move
constantly and at different speeds.

> Rolling tarballs for both arch and ~arch together is no more work than
> one or the other. It would be the same automated stuff.

Problems that occur one day might blow support...so those automated
stages need to be unsupported and we would win nothing out of it.

V-Li

--
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<URL:http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/lisp/>, #gentoo-lisp on FreeNode

<URL:http://www.faulhammer.org/>

Free-standing Portage / Recent stage3 tarballs / Beta
 

davecode@nospammail.net a écrit :

I'm not clear how I said otherwise? Well, okay, straighten me out ...
My understanding is

* Gentoo has two parallel ongoing branches, arch and ~arch
* ~arch has more recent packages than arch but less stability
* both branches keep upgrading over time with bug/security/feature fixes
* the only stage3 tarballs that exist are for the previous mega public
release
* Gentoo releng team plants a pole in the ground and ~arch becomes arch
"beta"


Nope, this is not how it happens. The stabling process happens all year
long, even when releases are not being prepared.


In fact, very little changes when releases are being, as Chris and
Andrew said, the stable release is a snapshot of the stable tree at a
given moment in time. Nothing else. arch doesn't change, ~arch doesn't
change either.


Rémi
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Free-standing Portage / Recent stage3 tarballs / Beta
 

If you really want to test ~arch packets you don't necessarily need
~arch stages to download, you can just switch your Installation to
~arch and then file bugs etc.
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Free-standing Portage / Recent stage3 tarballs / Beta
 

On 03/02/2008, Markus Hauschild <hauschild.markus@googlemail.com> wrote:
> If you really want to test ~arch packets you don't necessarily need
> ~arch stages to download, you can just switch your Installation to
> ~arch and then file bugs etc.

.. which may not be received too well. There is a perception that
Developers *support* ~arch, which is a skewed outlook; it's there for
testing, it is *not* meant to be used by 99.5% of end users. It is a
means to an end, a way to track packages which *may* be stable, a QA
process.

ie: The following would/should be entirely acceptable:

<User> I'm running ~arch of libfoo and it's breaking appwoo, help!
Need this to work, really *REALLY* badly!

<Dev> We're aware of those issues, but libfoo works fine for most
of the other apps which require it. No ETA on the fix,
tough sh*t for running ~arch on a critical box.

<User> Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh !

If you're interested in helping that QA process, most of the
architecture teams now have an 'Arch Tester' (AT) setup you could help
out with...
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Free-standing Portage / Recent stage3 tarballs / Beta
 

Alex Howells wrote:

On 03/02/2008, Markus Hauschild <hauschild.markus@googlemail.com> wrote:

If you really want to test ~arch packets you don't necessarily need
~arch stages to download, you can just switch your Installation to
~arch and then file bugs etc.


.. which may not be received too well. There is a perception that
Developers *support* ~arch, which is a skewed outlook; it's there for
testing, it is *not* meant to be used by 99.5% of end users. It is a
means to an end, a way to track packages which *may* be stable, a QA
process.

ie: The following would/should be entirely acceptable:

<User> I'm running ~arch of libfoo and it's breaking appwoo, help!
Need this to work, really *REALLY* badly!

<Dev> We're aware of those issues, but libfoo works fine for most
of the other apps which require it. No ETA on the fix,
tough sh*t for running ~arch on a critical box.

<User> Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh !

If you're interested in helping that QA process, most of the
architecture teams now have an 'Arch Tester' (AT) setup you could help
out with...


Well ... I've been running ~x86 and ~amd64 for a long time and I can't
remember an instance where I needed to drop back to stable for the
things I regularly use, such as R, maxima, Ruby, Lyx, and I can't
remember a time when I needed to drop back to stable for a core
component like the kernel, gcc, perl, or python either. But -- that's
x86 and amd64 -- it might be much riskier on something less common, like
powerpc.


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Free-standing Portage / Recent stage3 tarballs / Beta
 

> > .. which may not be received too well. There is a perception that
> > Developers *support* ~arch, which is a skewed outlook; it's there for
> > testing, it is *not* meant to be used by 99.5% of end users. It is a
> > means to an end, a way to track packages which *may* be stable, a QA
> > process.
> >
> > ie: The following would/should be entirely acceptable:
> >
> > <User> I'm running ~arch of libfoo and it's breaking appwoo, help!
> > Need this to work, really *REALLY* badly!
> >
> > <Dev> We're aware of those issues, but libfoo works fine for most
> > of the other apps which require it. No ETA on the fix,
> > tough sh*t for running ~arch on a critical box.
> >
> > <User> Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh !
> >
> > If you're interested in helping that QA process, most of the
> > architecture teams now have an 'Arch Tester' (AT) setup you could help
> > out with...
>
> Well ... I've been running ~x86 and ~amd64 for a long time and I can't
> remember an instance where I needed to drop back to stable for the
> things I regularly use, such as R, maxima, Ruby, Lyx, and I can't
> remember a time when I needed to drop back to stable for a core
> component like the kernel, gcc, perl, or python either. But -- that's
> x86 and amd64 -- it might be much riskier on something less common, like
> powerpc.

I wasn't attempting to state "This does not work!"; merely expressing
that ~arch isn't really a supported platform. Dropping back to stable
isn't really a viable route, once your system is ~arch there's quite a
lot to go <BOOM!> if you tried to globally undo that. Wanna try it?
;)

At the moment Gentoo Linux has a reputation as a "ricer" distribution,
and a large proportion of users on ~arch does nothing to solve that...
Speaking entirely frankly I'd love to see increased adoption in
enterprise, there's a whole lot this distribution has to offer to
server farms, for example.

Look at it this way: by running ~arch whilst *not* a Developer or
Arch Tester you're having a very limited impact, or possibly a
negative one. Getting onto the 'track' of contributing to the project
through the various 'Arch Tester' teams is a great way for a "Power
User" to help out; should you feel you're more technically inclined,
can write a useful language or three / hack ebuilds as naturally as
breathing, I know we need Developers! Especially in understaffed
areas like Release Engineering. :)

I'd have liked to see two main things happen with Gentoo 2008.0:

* Get rid of stage3 - all our install documentation works with
just the stage3 right now, we don't "support" stage1/2
installs yet users are /always/ asking on IRC and MLs
for help with a stage1 install because they think it's l33t.
Remove it from mirrors, put it in /experimental, whatever;
we need the stage1/2 somewhere for lotsa reasons, but lets
make it less obvious to weed out those clueless ricers.

(the next one is more of a Portage change)
* Have some warning banners on ~arch and a toggle option for
make.conf to disable them. There are *far* too many people
on IRC suggesting newbies adopt ~arch, and they do so.. :(
They've got no clue what it means, then they bitch/whine
when they hit ABI issues or other problems and blame Gentoo.
Don't document the toggle option in the Install Manual ;)

Suggested value for disabling the big flashy warning banners :P
MODIFYING_ACCEPT_KEYWORDS_MAY_BREAK_MY_BOX_AND_I_U NDERSTAND_THIS
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