Summary of Gentoo council meeting 13 November 2012 Roll Call ========= betelgeuse Chainsaw rich0 (proxy for dberkholz) graaff (proxy for ulm) grobian scarabeus WilliamH Handling separate /usr support ============================== WilliamH requested approval for two methods to support separate /usr systems[2]. The discussion is closely related to recent opinons on udev, such as e.g. [1], because the main reason to force a system without separate /usr during boot is to allow newer versions of udev to be used. The originally announced item of discussing the removal of gen_usr_ldscript has been retracted[4]. - approve/disapprove plan (forcing everyone to take action, and implement one of the two "supported" solutions) WilliamH requests a council vote to allow migrating everyone after bugs [5,6,7] are resolved. He proposes a news item to announce this that allows to assume after a given period of time that everyone who is using split /usr is using a method to mount /usr before boot. The focus is purely on this topic. rich0 prefers to move on until suport for separate /usr becomes a barrier, and handle things from there. This allows for alternative solutions to be developed and put forward. He favours waiting somewhat to see developments of the udev fork. Chainsaw is a strong proponent for waiting a month and see how the new udev fork develops itself. If within a month no solution is provided by the udev fork, things need to be moved forward in WilliamH's proposed way. scarabeus approves the plan. betelgeuse likes to ensure users won't be caught off guard, but has no preference for any direction taken in particular. graaff's main concern is how the problem is tied to udev, or not. A fork of udev may not change the situation regarding separate /usr, hence delaying a decision now is not sensical. Opt-in system for people to ensure they can boot is pre-requisite. If this cannot be ensured, we have to wait. grobian disapproves the plan, since there will be systems that cannot easily be changed to ensure /usr being mounted at boot, and it is no good to expel users of (security) updates just because of that. With the use of a special profile (masks/unmasks, variables and/or use-flags), users that want to move on, can opt-in to getting packages that require non separate /usr. Policy on "<" versioned dependencies ==================================== chithahn requested the council to clear up confusion around "<" versioned dependencies[3]. This issue seems to combine: 1) notorious behaviour from the usual suspects 2) QA policies whether or not they are properly documented/advertised 3) the technical problem of "<" dependencies causing downgrades The council sees no rule that makes it illegal to use < dependencies, but strongly discourages their use. It must be noted that for some packages, a downgrade is very undesirable. This has triggered package removals in the past. However, the council requests the teams responsible for that removal to act reasonably and in good cooperation with the maintainers of the packages in question. Open bugs with council involvement ================================== Bug 383467 "Council webpage lacks results for 2010 and 2011 elections" - ulm has done the work here, waiting for a confirmation that we can really close the bug Bug 438338 "Please update devmanual with EAPI5 info" - no progress and/or actions planned for this Open Floor ========== No issues were brought up to the council. Next meeting date ================= 11 December 2012, 20:00 UTC [1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/10/2/303 [2] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.project/2208 [3] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.project/2213 [4] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.project/2235 [5] https://bugs.gentoo.org/411627 [6] https://bugs.gentoo.org/435756 [7] https://bugs.gentoo.org/441004