[mythtv-users] Heads up - Gentoo 0.22 Upgrade Coming Soon

Richard Freeman r-mythtv at thefreemanclan.net
Wed Mar 3 15:42:31 UTC 2010


On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:42:03 -0500, Michael T. Dean wrote:
>
> So, please get your facts straight before you start accusing others
> of breaking stuff you**** broke or being unaware of bigger changes
> (that didn't occur).  Thank you.  And, I apologize in advance for my
> attitude--but you really shouldn't be blaming us.

I tried not to assign blame in my original email, and I sincerely
apologize if it came across this way.  Stuff like this can be hard to
detect, which is why nobody detected it until fairly late.  I do realize
that there is some sensitivity around this issue based on a few emails/
blogs/etc I've seen, although I haven't really had any personal
involvement in any of this.

Honestly, I had no involvement in the decision to change the mysql 
locale settings.  I've heard that it was based on direction from 
upstream, but I can't confirm that one way or another.  I don't know 
that this really matters - a problem came up due to some complex 
software interactions, that nobody involved with any of the projects 
involved had foreseen.

> And, really, when someone recommends a change of a program that's a
> required dependency of another, you might want to at least try to
> figure out the effect that change would have on the program that
> depends on it.

That would be hundreds of programs.  We're talking about a general-
purpose distro, not something like a MythTV-only distro that will run a
database that only one program will connect to.

In any case, it was tested, and no problems were detected, since the
problem was fairly silent in MythTV 0.21.  I've been running for years
now in the mixed locale configuration and the first I heard that there
might be problems was just a few months ago.

> ***Regardless of what anyone may say, from MythTV 0.21-fixes and
> below's standpoint, the MySQL server was misconfigured--because it
> was configured differently from the required configuration.

Keep in mind that it is difficult for any distro to respect a "required 
configuration," unless we're talking about something like MythBuntu 
which is single-purpose.  I'm sure that lots of upstream projects have 
required configurations, and at best a distro could probably satisfy 
exactly one of them.  Distros do need to do their part as integrators to 
spot problems with configuration differences, but this problem was a 
subtle one.

> That said, no one had explored the issue to even realize that the
> required configuration was required.

All this stuff amounts to "software can be hard."  Distros have to
support hundreds of applications, and applications have to support 
dozens of distros.  A program like MySQL is extremely complex, and I'm 
sure there are 14 other specific MySQL settings that could cause MythTV
problems that nobody knows about.

The important thing is to try to work things out well when these sorts 
of things happen, and to put the ultimate users first.  In the end, I 
don't really care whose fault any of this is, I just want people who run 
stable Gentoo to have a smooth upgrade experience (even if it requires a 
few extra steps).

Perhaps blame has been cast where it wasn't warranted.  Perhaps some 
have forgotten that we've paid nothing for MythTV (or MySQL or whatever 
distro you run) and yet we have a product that I personally feel rivals 
most commercial DVRs.  To the extent that any of that has come from the 
Gentoo community I do apologize as a representative of that community.

In the end we all need to work together, as FOSS is a small community, 
and we all depend on the fruits of another's labor.

PS - MythTV just went stable on amd64.  I suspect the x86/PPC archs will 
follow fairly quickly.  I saw that qt3 is already masked pending removal.



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