On Tue, 2002-12-17 at 12:40, Sean P. Kane wrote:
> All this
> does is point out the real lesson to be learned here. Gentoo may be
> "cutting-edge", but the stability problems MUST be fixed, expecially in
> Portafge, because if it breaks, it can leave a system in a very
> difficult to recover state. 

We actually have a good QA procedure in place for Portage. The problem
was caused by a senior developer doing things that he shouldn't and not
following this procedure. 

Again, I don't want to make this person feel worse than he already does
(and he does feel bad about his error in judgement.) I sharing this info
for the sole purpose of letting everyone know that normally this problem
would have been caught way before it hit end-users, and that we *do*
have a QA procedure in place for Portage.

Today, I've made extra sure that all our devs are very clear on the
rules regarding new Portage releases. I've done what's necessary to help
ensure that issues like this are avoided in the future. I am now going
to incorporate these details regarding Portage QA into our official
policy documentation on the Web site so that future developers will do
the right thing too.

Sincerely,

-- 
Daniel Robbins
Chief Architect, Gentoo Linux
http://www.gentoo.org