I know that =dev-lang/python-2.5.2-r6 is failing for me (bug 234376) and so should portage. It tries to emerge that package every time and I don't think it's necessary and very annoying. Sure, we shouldn't have failing packages anyway, but the truth is, that they exists. I think portage should recognize that a package failed, say, three times and don't try to emerge that ebuild anymore. That would save a lot of time and computing power. This should obviously not be the default as there are many reasons why a build can fail, i.e. running out of disk-space or OOM. So it's not always the packages fault but I feel that this is a handy FEATURE if you know that it's the packages fault. Reproducible: Always
Is there something that's wrong with package.mask? It would fulfill the function you're requesting
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 232086 ***
Yes, your probably right. I somehow thought that it should do it automatically but not-building packages should be rather seldom so I actuall can do it on my own.
I'd actually consider such a feature harmful (at least for developers and power-users), esp. when testing/debugging new packages where you sometimes _want_ the package fail to build or trying to figure out what exactly is causing it to fail.
(In reply to comment #4) > I'd actually consider such a feature harmful (at least for developers and > power-users), esp. when testing/debugging new packages where you sometimes > _want_ the package fail to build or trying to figure out what exactly is > causing it to fail. > Sure, but I'd say, that it's not what the majority of the people using portage want. They, at least I do, want things to just work^tm. And the rationale would be, that if it's known that a package doesn't build, it shouldn't be build! But as I've already mentioned in comment #3, that shouldn't be the case anyway and it's not cumbersome to add it to packages.mask.
