[arch-general] A suggestion for the devs regarding rebuilds

[Mike Sampson]

On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 1:49 PM, Eric Bélanger <snowmaniscool at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 8:52 PM, hollunder <hollunder at lavabit.com> wrote:
[snip]
>
> As far as mirror are concernced, we (the devs) are aware of the
> problem and knew that the move of the rebuild out of testing would
> create havoc on the mirrors. However, we are working toward fixing
> that problem: http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2010-February/015335.html
>  So we shouldn't have these mirrors sync problem anymore.
>

This will be handy and much appreciated. The only real issue I had
with the libpng/libjpeg update was it took quite a while for my mirror
to sync. In the end I added ftp.archlinux.org to the end of my
mirrorlist to retrieve one or two packages.

In regards to the library issue I do still have a need for libpng12 as
the QuakeLive plugin doesn't work with libpng14. It was nice to find
the older version in the aur. I am happy with this. Normally I don't
want old libraries hanging around though it is nice to have the option
of grabbing them from the aur if required.

I'm a little surprised by the length of this thread. I live by three
simple rules when it comes to updating and seldom have major issues:

1. Update daily. Arch is a rolling release system. Roll with it or get
left behind.
2. Don't mix stable, for want of a better word, and testing. One of my
systems runs testing, the rest run stable. Testing is an all or
nothing option. Enabling it to grab one package may have unfortunate
consequences if it drags in updated libraries.
3. Skim the mailing list and news page every now and then. While I
don't run testing on my main machine I do like to have an idea of what
is coming down the pipe with regards to rebuilds and major updates.

Mike