AFAICS live ebuilds belonging to x11 overlay are mostly masked using package.mask and have KEYWORDS set like the unstable versions of the packages. Masking them through package.mask has the particular disadvantage that if masked versions of X11 packages are introduced in portage, copying the mask from gentoo-x86's package.mask into package.unmask causes portage to unmask the live versions too. Moreover, adding keywords to live ebuilds is logically incorrect - as the sources they refer to change over time, they can not be 'believed to work' [1]. Therefore, I suggest dropping keywords from all live ebuilds in x11 overlay, and then dropping the package.mask file. [1] http://devmanual.gentoo.org/keywording/index.html
Using package.unmask will put your system in an unsupportable state anyway. http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=3&chap=3#doc_chap3 And overlays can have different QA standards than the portage tree.
But using keywords to mask live versions allows users to explicitly state that they want to use live version, while using package.mask makes it possible to mistakenly unmask live versions when unmasking testing gentoo-x86 versions.
We've had this question come up every once in a while and so far, the proposed change would provide almost no gain for users and would be a major PITA for our current users. Also, ebuilds in the overlay are our reference ebuilds. Once ebuilds are in portage, we rarely touch them. And if we have to, the changes are also put back into the overlay. So until recently, having empty KEYWORDS would mean extra work when doing bumps. However, prefix keywords were added to portage and so the current ebuilds can't be easily pushed to portage like we used to. Bottom line, I hear and understand your arguments, but they were not (IMHO) strong enough to warrant such an intrusive change. With the current mess in the overlay, maybe now would be a good time to do so, I don't know. I'm still not fully convinced... Cheers
It does not matter for Xorg at all. It is good rule for main tree -> no polution of p.mask in main tree It is usefull for kde overlay -> more fine graned levelage for various versions. Xorg has only one version in there and it does not really matter if you put it under p.unmask or under p.keywords. Be sure i will be first implementing it for X if it would be interesting. After all i am the person enforcing these rules :]
