Re: [buildd] Etch?
On Fri, 4 Aug 2006, Finn Thain wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Aug 2006, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> > On Fri, 4 Aug 2006, Finn Thain wrote:
> > > On Fri, 4 Aug 2006, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Since most of the problems are caused by compiler issues, what
> > > > guarantees that a
> > > > release-without-packages-that-caused-obvious-problems doesn't
> > > > contain non-obvious problems caused by those same compiler issues?
> > >
> > > Was there ever a release with no bugs? No known bugs?
> >
> > Of course not.
> >
> > But an unreliable toolchain is a guarantee for more bugs.
>
> I think I see what you meant: we might still meet the release criteria for
> etch while there are still packages unbuilt due to toolchain bugs. Now
> that _would_ be a problem for Gentoo ;-)
Sorry if I didn't make it clear what I meant. I'll try to explain.
An unreliable toolchain causes:
1. Compile failures -> obvious
2. Broken applications that are used a lot: basic tools (e.g. ls), system
tools (e.g. ifconfig), things run during boot up (e.g. fsck), build tools
(e.g. bison) -> probably easy to find they are broken
3. Broken applications that are rarely used -> non-obvious
So while we will know about the packages in categories 1 and 2, there may be
lots of silent breakage in category 3.
Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
Geert
--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org
In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
-- Linus Torvalds
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