[arch-general] Please stop abusing of the out-of-date option

[Mauro Santos]

On 01-12-2011 15:41, Tom Gundersen wrote:
> 2011/12/1 Cédric Girard <girard.cedric at gmail.com>:
>> On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 4:06 PM, Ionut Biru wrote:
>>
>>> don't report out of date packages that follow odd/even versioning scheme.
>>>
>>> even - stable
>>> odd - development.
>>>
>>> This applies to all gnome modules/apps, including banshee! :D
>>>
>>
>> Good to know. This is not always obvious when you are not familiar with the
>> release policy of a given piece of software.
> 
> Corollary:
> 
> 
> Do not report as out-of-date packages whose release policy you are not
> familiar with...
> 
> 
> -t
> 

Fair enough, however when checking some projects' page it just says:
version x.y.z released, and there is no mention whatsoever if it is a
stable version or not and for some programs it's not clear from the
release logs what are stable releases and testing releases.

Personally, before I flag something as out of date I usually test if the
new version builds fine by changing the version in the pkgbuild, but
I've been wrong before when flagging something as out of date when the
latest release was a testing/unstable release, even though it builds
fine and may solve some problem with the current stable version, in
which case I build a more up to date version from abs for me and wait
for the next stable version to be released in the repos.

Don't take this as a complaint, because it isn't and I'm sorry if it
seems to be, it's just that some users in their willingness to want to
keep arch the most up to date are incorrectly flagging packages out of
date and I can understand how that upsets the devs, but in most cases I
guess it's not with bad intentions.

-- 
Mauro Santos