gnome compilation problems

[Stefan Bruda]

At 20:01 -0500 on 2007-10-24 Ryan Schmidt wrote:
 > 
 > Nobody forces you to upgrade any port, or any other software on
 > your machine, for that matter. You can choose to upgrade, or
 > not. 

Yes it does: An automatic `port upgrade outdated' will upgrade
everything.  Should I then sit down every time and decide what I want
to upgrade and what I don't?  On what should I base my decision?
There is no keyword to help me out.  I was under the impression that
Macports is a production system, so it should upgrade to a usable
configuration automatically--if not all the time at least most of the
time.

 > That being said, new versions should be better than old ones. 

Precisely.  GNOME in particular is consistently problematic at first
when it is upgraded and it should not be.

 > If you find problems with new versions, please file tickets.

Of course, but in the meantime I would like to keep a usable
installation.  If I have a test machine (which I don't) I would be
more than happy to live on the edge and report bugs; however whenever
I am upgrading my production machine I like to have things mostly
working--the DE being one important piece, I like to have it working
all the time.

 > How would splitting the ports tree into stable and unstable help?
 > Specifically, if we declare our current ports tree "unstable", by
 > what mechanism does software get to the "stable" branch? Who
 > decides what is stable and when? We currently have no information
 > about how many of our ports even build currently, and of course
 > that varies by OS and platform.

That's an excellent point.  I guess the maintainer could decide on the
matter.  What I would like to see is actually versioning (Gentoo
style), tagged with a stable/unstable keywords.  If I want to keep a
stable system, I can keep within the stable versions; if I want to
live on the edge, I can go to development; if I am tired of living on
the edge I can reset my keyword and re-upgrade (port upgrade will then
need to be capable of downgrading too); if I want to live in the edge
only for a portion of the tree, then I should be able to "unmask"
ports individually.

Right now I don't even know what I did when the system broke--there
are no longs so I cannot go back in time even manually unless I write
down the list of ports being upgraded before I issue the upgrade
command.

But then I might be the only one who could use this, so do not take my
comments more seriously than they are worth.

Cheers,
Stefan

-- 
If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as
it isn't, it ain't.  That's logic.
    --Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass