General question about 'testing' repo

Harey · 2010-01-20 17:25:23

Hello all,

today I screwed up my system by using pacman -Syu. I have 'testing' enabled and I am used to look for errors while upgrading. I am fully aware that there is a risk about using 'testing'. I found out that there had been updates for some libs. In my case it was libjpeg which srewed up openoffice being linked against an older version of that lib. Disabling testing and doing a pacman -Suu saved my day.

While researching I found out that there had been a warning on the arch-dev mailing list about not using 'testing' while people are rebuilding their packages against the new libs. See:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=89182
First of all, in my opinion this would have been worth a remark on the arch website to warn people like me that don't follow the mailing lists. I want to contribute by using testing and tracking down bugs but this is just time consuming... Did I misunderstand the sense behind 'testing'?

And further on, is there a way to circumvent such a xxxxxxxxx ? (censored offending language)

Couldn't there be a pause for pushing things to testing until all dependencies are rebuild as well?

Harvey

wonder · 2010-01-20 17:37:00

Harey wrote:

Hello all,
First of all, in my opinion this would have been worth a remark on the arch website to warn people like me that don't follow the mailing lists. I want to contribute by using testing and tracking down bugs but this is just time consuming... Did I misunderstand the sense behind 'testing'?

subscribe to arch-dev-public

And further on, is there a way to circumvent such a xxxxxxxxx ? (censored offending language)
Couldn't there be a pause for pushing things to testing until all dependencies are rebuild as well?

we had a jpng repository and we used it since we got all the basic stuff rebuilt. having that repo made TUs don't had any possibility to build packages agaisn't libpng/libjpeg since they didn't had a separate repo and cannot sync with mirrors.

This was the reason it was moved in testing. But this discussion we had in arch-dev-public before merging.

drcouzelis · 2010-01-20 17:50:52

The development process and use of [testing] makes sense to me. Now I can't decide if I'm going to downgrade all of the packages that were updated or keep updating throughout the week until everything has been fixed.

xduugu · 2010-01-20 19:04:39

Since I'm too lazy to rebuild all my aur packages at once, I put libjpeg.so.7 and libjpeg.so.7.0.0 from libjpeg7 into /usr/lib as well as libpng12.so, libpng12.so.0, libpng12.so.0.40.0, libpng.so.3 and libpng.so.3.40.0 from libpng 1.2.xyz. That way, all new packages I build will be linked against libjpeg8 and libpng 1.4 and a nice side-effect is that packages that have not rebuild yet still work (e.g. openoffice).

Perhaps that is an option for you, too. Just make sure you do not forget to remove these files when they are not required anymore.

Last edited by xduugu (2010-01-20 19:05:48)

drcouzelis · 2010-01-20 19:58:39

Great idea! I think I'll do that when I get home. Thanks.

I'll put those seven old files into /usr/local/lib, then soft link them into /usr/lib.

umpalumpa1985 · 2010-01-21 01:15:49

I did the same thing as two posts above, but thunat was screaming about "libjpeg=7 required" or something like that, so this may not work in all applications, or at least for applications that actually check for a specific version of a lib installed

ngoonee · 2010-01-21 05:55:35

In general, if you're using [testing] you should be subscribed to arch-dev-public. You wouldn't want to drive your ferrarri at night without headlights, after all.

Harey · 2010-01-21 09:01:32

ngoonee wrote:

In general, if you're using [testing] you should be subscribed to arch-dev-public. You wouldn't want to drive your ferrarri at night without headlights, after all.

This is exactly the conclusion I draw from this incident. So I subscribed to the mailing list although I am a little concerned about the traffic there. I am using testing for some time now but this step never seemed to be necessary until now. Well, I'm aging... So maybe I can't see the road as well as before

I am not really happy with the situation but having thought about it I am not able to present a better solution. Using testing is a risk but if you want those people to join the mailing list wouldn't it be good to tell them in the right place, iE the pacman wiki? A small note on the homepage like 'library rebuild in progress, use testing with care these days' would come in handy as well. Maybe this would have saved a few forum entries...

Just my two cents

Harvey

bangkok_manouel · 2010-01-21 09:13:18

Harey wrote:

So I subscribed to the mailing list although I am a little concerned about the traffic there.

traffic is quite low actually. i'd say about 3-5 mails/day average.

Allan · 2010-01-21 09:24:22

bangkok_manouel wrote:

Harey wrote:
So I subscribed to the mailing list although I am a little concerned about the traffic there.
traffic is quite low actually. i'd say about 3-5 mails/day average.

I save emails in the folder for 1 month and I have 334 emails. That makes about 10 a day. But 1/2 of them are package signoffs which can be filtered.

drcouzelis · 2010-01-21 15:52:35

Harey wrote:

Using testing is a risk but if you want those people to join the mailing list wouldn't it be good to tell them in the right place, iE the pacman wiki?

Done! http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman#Repositories

Harey wrote:

A small note on the homepage like 'library rebuild in progress, use testing with care these days' would come in handy as well. Maybe this would have saved a few forum entries...

I don't know... Arch users aren't "expected" to use [testing], so putting it on the homepage seems a little too much. If someone actively chooses to use [testing], then they would be expected to understand the consequences and know where to get information.

I think having that information in arch-dev-public is good enough. Any more would just seem like duplication of effort.

Daenyth · 2010-01-22 00:01:55

I've added a note to the wiki's "Official repositories" page that [testing] users should be subscribed to the mailing list and use the bug tracker.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-01-20 17:25:23

General question about 'testing' repo

#2 2010-01-20 17:37:00

Re: General question about 'testing' repo

#3 2010-01-20 17:50:52

Re: General question about 'testing' repo

#4 2010-01-20 19:04:39

Re: General question about 'testing' repo

#5 2010-01-20 19:58:39

Re: General question about 'testing' repo

#6 2010-01-21 01:15:49

Re: General question about 'testing' repo

#7 2010-01-21 05:55:35

Re: General question about 'testing' repo

#8 2010-01-21 09:01:32

Re: General question about 'testing' repo

#9 2010-01-21 09:13:18

Re: General question about 'testing' repo

#10 2010-01-21 09:24:22

Re: General question about 'testing' repo

#11 2010-01-21 15:52:35

Re: General question about 'testing' repo

#12 2010-01-22 00:01:55

Re: General question about 'testing' repo

Board footer