Re: pkgsrc stability vs. updates

[nia <nia%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Fri, Mar 07, 2025 at 10:58:33PM +0100, Thomas Klausner wrote:
> On the other hand, if we have too high requirements, then people will
> just stop updating packages, because they don't want to deal with the
> fallout. Just as one example, I don't think it's reasonable to expect
> one person to fix all packages using boost when updating it - here's
> (not just boost, in general) where I hope for a common effort. (I
> think I have fixed more than my fair share of boost fallout which is
> why I dare use it as example :-) ).

Our approach to boost is "more instability than Debian Stable".
As a smaller project it definitely makes sense to delay updates
until the rest of the ecosystem has caught up.

> Another one that I think is a too-high requirement is what dreckly
> claims to aim for - no regressions on any platforms in the CI.
> Because at least I for one don't have the setup to test or fix seven
> or more operating systems, and I don't know anyone else who has (with
> perhaps the exception of Jonathan). CI is nice in telling you when
> something breaks, but it's bad for actually fixing stuff because you
> can just submit "guess-fixes" and wait for the next run to tell you if
> it fixed the problem. This is highly inefficient.

Most fallout is very easy to fix: a PLIST entry here, a missing
dependency there. Most of my 10 thousand commits are one or two
line fixes.