[gentoo-dev] Regen2 ( was QA Overlay Layout support )

[Caleb Cushing]

I'd like to start with, I'm not trying to stir up trouble but since
questions were asked i'll answer them.

If you think neither should exist why do you have an opinion about this at all?

I merged the java-overlay into regen2 a couple of weeks ago. as of
right now I've no plans to support java-experimental.

I'm fine with overlays so long as working ebuilds spend no more than a
few weeks in them. I have my own development branch and half the stuff
that's in there that isn't in the main tree doesn't work. Things like
perl 5.10 have been rotting in an overlay for a year. Funtoo ( under
my direction ) and Regen2 have had it ~arch for over a month now. We
found one bug post release thus far. I filed a bug on xorg-server
1.6.0 not being in tree. It was resolved fixed (in overlay) (which
another bug clearly states it has amd64 build issues). since when has
(in overlay) been an acceptable solution to a missing package? I said
it before, the reason I like gentoo* distro's is I don't have to find
the repository to get the latest package, that's just a pain, in
ubuntu, in opensuse, in fedora... etc. But no more... officially
supported huge overlays have ruined this.

on the topic of sunrise, I approve of sunrise to a degree. I like the
non-reviewed half, but once they're reviewed they should be put in
tree. Isn't it true that some of those packages never get maintainers?

What makes you think that overlays aren't for developers, aspiring developers
and interested users where they are working on stuff?

users don't know how to hack. the very definition of user says that,
imo. There are developers, admins, and users. admins don't want
overlays, they are supposed to be unstable. users can't hack, so what
do they care. the problem is, an overlay has become a repo, I'm not
sure that it was originally intended for that.

It is desirable IMO that
all such people can easily be given full access to muck around and learn.

this does not mean officially supported overlays. You obviously won't
commit just anything to an officially supported overlay which suggests
that you don't allow 'mucking around'.

Further, overlays are good places to put ebuilds for software that is more
experimental than what's expected for ~arch. That includes live ebuilds. In the
end, overlays have a (far) lower level of guaranteed quality than the main tree,
for their ebuilds

because ~arch is supposed to work? take open bug on wine-1.1.16 it
doesn't build on amd64 and yet it's ~amd64. how about that nam ebuild
that has invalid bash that I mentioned? that's some quality work
there. The point is the tree is no better or worse than the overlays
in many cases.

might even argue that Funtoo is one big overlay. When your own ability to
contribute directly depends on an overlay, then why are you arguing against
other people's overlays?

perhaps this is the real problem gentoo's primary way to accept user
contributions is via overlays. I disagree with the calling of Funtoo
as one big overlay, it's a replacement tree, and it provides
everything needed within that tree, as does regen2. overlays however
rely on an external tree, and now you've been discussing making them
rely on other overlays.

Please point me to the people willing and having the time to maintain
those >100 new ebuilds in the main tree.

given all the problems with the in tree ebuilds that aren't properly
maintained, I see no difference.

Regen2, is attempting to fix these problems, and more. I do try to get
my fixes back upstream here, but more often than not the bug
languishes. I don't think Gentoo is bad, but I do think it's taken a
wrong turn. But I suppose that these things are problems are simply my
opinion.

I've probably already offended a large share of people on this list,
now lets see if I can offend a few more by soliciting.

I consider Regen2 ready for use, but pre-release since I have yet to
roll ISO's and tarballs. Anyone who wants to help is welcome, be you
current, former or aspiring developer. More info at http://regen2.org

I will not discuss regen2 further on this list as I feel this is not
really the place, but I was asked. I am willing to discuss overlays
further, but I'm not sure I really have more to say. I suppose the
last thing would be back in the day I got everything from the tree, if
I wanted, needed something else I downloaded an individual ebuild, and
put it in /my/ local overlay. I didn't download a bunch of incomplete
mini-trees using a tool.

[Peter Alfredsen]

On Wed, 4 Mar 2009 02:32:13 -0500

Post by Caleb Cushing
I'd like to start with, I'm not trying to stir up trouble but since
questions were asked i'll answer them.

If you think neither should exist why do you have an opinion about this at all?

I merged the java-overlay into regen2 a couple of weeks ago. as of
right now I've no plans to support java-experimental.

Then don't. Really.

Post by Caleb Cushing
I filed a bug on xorg-server
1.6.0 not being in tree. It was resolved fixed (in overlay) (which
another bug clearly states it has amd64 build issues). since when has
(in overlay) been an acceptable solution to a missing package?

That's pretty much at developer discretion. Please note that we have to
have an actual working distribution, which means that sometimes we use
overlays to make basic QA checks against installed packages (Does it
build? Does it work?). That said, I try to not close bugs before
they've been resolved in-tree precisely because of the reaction that
provoked on bug 260582. I personally like to have my bugs reflect the
state of the tree.

Bugzilla is a tool for developers to track progress, not for
third-party distributions to track progress. You've forked the tree.
That's fine. The license allows that. But it doesn't obligate us to
adapt our tools to fit your purpose. Bugzilla is a strictly
technical tool, so comments on bugs should be kept free of ad hominem
remarks. From all parties.

Your behavior on bug 260582 was clearly unacceptable. You
seem to think that we owe you something. Please re-examine your
premises. Donnie already told you he was working on it. Our job is not
to support your distribution. It is to make the best distro for
ourselves. In the case of xorg-server, that means getting something
into the tree that works. A masked ebuild will in this case be more
bother than it's worth because the mask would have to encompass a
bunch of other packages. Which leads me on to the next paragraph...

Post by Caleb Cushing
I said it before, the reason I like gentoo* distro's is I don't have
to find the repository to get the latest package, that's just a pain,
in ubuntu, in opensuse, in fedora... etc. But no more... officially
supported huge overlays have ruined this.

Please contact me on IRC. I'll mentor you. It shouldn't be painful for
someone as knowledgeable as you. That way you get to fix most problems
yourself. If you prefer someone else to mentor you, we can probably
arrange that too.

Post by Caleb Cushing
on the topic of sunrise, I approve of sunrise to a degree. I like the
non-reviewed half, but once they're reviewed they should be put in
tree. Isn't it true that some of those packages never get maintainers?

They need maintainers to be maintained in-tree. Sorry, but that's the
deal.

Post by Caleb Cushing
users don't know how to hack. the very definition of user says that,
imo. There are developers, admins, and users. admins don't want
overlays, they are supposed to be unstable. users can't hack, so what
do they care. the problem is, an overlay has become a repo, I'm not
sure that it was originally intended for that.

It wasn't. And if an admin has a problem with overlays he can become a
developer. *hint*

There are too many possible packages for the number of developers we
have in Gentoo. But that'll always be the case, probably, no matter how
many developers you pour in. If you have specific grievances, the
recruitment process is the obvious remedy since you seem to have the
time, the ability and the will to adress them.

Post by Caleb Cushing
this does not mean officially supported overlays. You obviously won't
commit just anything to an officially supported overlay which suggests
that you don't allow 'mucking around'.

The only thing in Gentoo that's 'officially supported' is the tree.

Post by Caleb Cushing

Further, overlays are good places to put ebuilds for software that
is more experimental than what's expected for ~arch. That includes
live ebuilds. In the end, overlays have a (far) lower level of
guaranteed quality than the main tree, for their ebuilds

because ~arch is supposed to work? take open bug on wine-1.1.16 it
doesn't build on amd64 and yet it's ~amd64.

QA fail, amd64 keyword dropped.

Post by Caleb Cushing
how about that nam ebuild
that has invalid bash that I mentioned? that's some quality work
there. The point is the tree is no better or worse than the overlays
in many cases.

In many cases that's true, but on average, the QA of the tree is much
better than overlays.

Post by Caleb Cushing
perhaps this is the real problem gentoo's primary way to accept user
contributions is via overlays. I disagree with the calling of Funtoo
as one big overlay, it's a replacement tree, and it provides
everything needed within that tree, as does regen2.

We Need Git. It would really ease the workflow of accepting user
contributions if users could just set up their own overlay and sent me
an email asking to merge their changesets.

Post by Caleb Cushing
overlays however
rely on an external tree, and now you've been discussing making them
rely on other overlays.

Personally, I think that any itch that's scratch-worthy is commendable
but I would personally abstain from the rather elaborate java overlay
setup. Not because it doesn't work, it does to a degree, but because it
keeps potential developers away from Gentoo, instead playing in
sandboxes. And because it's a pain in the neck to keep track of
packages that aren't being used.

Post by Caleb Cushing
Regen2, is attempting to fix these problems, and more. I do try to get
my fixes back upstream here, but more often than not the bug
languishes. I don't think Gentoo is bad, but I do think it's taken a
wrong turn. But I suppose that these things are problems are simply my
opinion.

We need to get you recruited. Why haven't you pushed us more? You could
have made thousands of commits already, fixing a substantial amount of
the problems you've raised. I know the perl herd is always in need of
new devs. This isn't a quick fix. You'll have to work with people and
that can sometimes be frustrating. But you'll get to be part of the
development process and you'll get to work with the things you care
about.

Post by Caleb Cushing
I've probably already offended a large share of people on this list,
now lets see if I can offend a few more by soliciting.

If people can't take a bit of honest criticism, we've become too
thin-skinned.

/loki_val

[Caleb Cushing]

Post by Peter Alfredsen
Bugzilla is a tool for developers to track progress, not for
third-party distributions to track progress. You've forked the tree.
That's fine. The license allows that. But it doesn't obligate us to
adapt our tools to fit your purpose.

I've done lots of version bump bugs over the years. my reasons for
doing so may have changed. But the general process has not. Does it
matter if I've forked? doesn't the package still need an update?

Post by Peter Alfredsen
Your behavior on bug 260582 was clearly unacceptable. You
seem to think that we owe you something. Please re-examine your
premises. Donnie already told you he was working on it. Our job is not
to support your distribution. It is to make the best distro for
ourselves. In the case of xorg-server, that means getting something
into the tree that works. A masked ebuild will in this case be more
bother than it's worth because the mask would have to encompass a
bunch of other packages. Which leads me on to the next paragraph...

this and all the cases given are examples, and perhaps my behavior was
unacceptable. But I think the response to my bug was too. No gentoo
doesn't owe me or regen2, a thing. It might, however, owe users
something. I agree on committing ebuilds that work, that doesn't mean
I don't have the right to open a bug and watch for progress reports.

Post by Peter Alfredsen
In many cases that's true, but on average, the QA of the tree is much
better than overlays.

I couldn't say... I suppose I agree yes on most overlays, but a few
are supposed to be more 'exceptional'. the biggest problem is the bugs
that result between ebuilds in the tree and those of overlays. like
one I filed on virtual/perl-Mime-Base64. or like how inkscape won't
build against 5.10, except with patches already in bugzilla, but both
cases seemed to be one of 'perl 5.10 isn't in the tree so we won't
fix' I think they should put it in before 5.10 is in the tree. put
that's just me.

Post by Peter Alfredsen
We Need Git. It would really ease the workflow of accepting user
contributions if users could just set up their own overlay and sent me
an email asking to merge their changesets.

git's great. but I've actually found 'merging' changesets to be a bad
idea from people. It can lead to some really sloppy commits, and
merging is a less stringent review than cherry-picking patches.

Post by Peter Alfredsen
You could
have made thousands of commits already, fixing a substantial amount of
the problems you've raised.

thousands seem like a high number. I think I've been pushing an
average one 1 patch per day since january to the tree (my tree).
*laughing* I'm still the #1 contributor of git patches to funtoo.

Post by Peter Alfredsen
This isn't a quick fix.
You'll have to work with people and
that can sometimes be frustrating.

I already have to 'work' with these people, the difference would be
what? how much respect I get? in gentoo land having @gentoo.org seems
to mean something... if you don't have that, you seem to
auto-magically get less respect, than you would if you did have it.

Post by Peter Alfredsen
But you'll get to be part of the
development process and you'll get to work with the things you care
about.

you mean I'll be part of 'a' development process and work on some of
the things I care about. Obviously stepping on other developers toes
seems to be a taboo.

[Marijn Schouten (hkBst)]

Post by Caleb Cushing

Post by Peter Alfredsen
Bugzilla is a tool for developers to track progress, not for
third-party distributions to track progress. You've forked the tree.
That's fine. The license allows that. But it doesn't obligate us to
adapt our tools to fit your purpose.

I've done lots of version bump bugs over the years. my reasons for
doing so may have changed. But the general process has not. Does it
matter if I've forked? doesn't the package still need an update?

I think a lot (most?) of us agree that bugs shouldn't be closed until fixes hit
the main tree. But it indeed does not matter that you've forked, so you
shouldn't even have brought it up on the bug report. Bugs aren't a good way to
keep in touch with developers, that's what irc is for.

Post by Caleb Cushing

Post by Peter Alfredsen
Your behavior on bug 260582 was clearly unacceptable. You
seem to think that we owe you something. Please re-examine your
premises. Donnie already told you he was working on it. Our job is not
to support your distribution. It is to make the best distro for
ourselves. In the case of xorg-server, that means getting something
into the tree that works. A masked ebuild will in this case be more
bother than it's worth because the mask would have to encompass a
bunch of other packages. Which leads me on to the next paragraph...

this and all the cases given are examples, and perhaps my behavior was
unacceptable. But I think the response to my bug was too. No gentoo
doesn't owe me or regen2, a thing. It might, however, owe users
something. I agree on committing ebuilds that work, that doesn't mean
I don't have the right to open a bug and watch for progress reports.

No, you don't have that right. It's just how it usually works and how it should
work IMO, but that doesn't entitle you to it.

Post by Caleb Cushing

Post by Peter Alfredsen
In many cases that's true, but on average, the QA of the tree is much
better than overlays.

I couldn't say... I suppose I agree yes on most overlays, but a few
are supposed to be more 'exceptional'. the biggest problem is the bugs
that result between ebuilds in the tree and those of overlays. like
one I filed on virtual/perl-Mime-Base64. or like how inkscape won't
build against 5.10, except with patches already in bugzilla, but both
cases seemed to be one of 'perl 5.10 isn't in the tree so we won't
fix' I think they should put it in before 5.10 is in the tree. put
that's just me.

And they probably will, but as perl-5.10 isn't in the tree, there is no rush.
Either way, it's the perl team's decision to go with the patch in bugzilla or
some other option and when they do it, whether they make that decision
consciously or are forced into it due to real life time-constraints.

Post by Caleb Cushing

Post by Peter Alfredsen
We Need Git. It would really ease the workflow of accepting user
contributions if users could just set up their own overlay and sent me
an email asking to merge their changesets.

git's great. but I've actually found 'merging' changesets to be a bad
idea from people. It can lead to some really sloppy commits, and
merging is a less stringent review than cherry-picking patches.

I've found that git's patches aren't really what we want in the case of bumping.
For bug reports we usually ask for a patch against the last ebuild in the tree.
Is there perhaps a way to make git do that automatically?

Post by Caleb Cushing

Post by Peter Alfredsen
You could
have made thousands of commits already, fixing a substantial amount of
the problems you've raised.

thousands seem like a high number. I think I've been pushing an
average one 1 patch per day since january to the tree (my tree).
*laughing* I'm still the #1 contributor of git patches to funtoo.

It's great that people are doing their own thing, but to get it into OUR tree it
will need to be comitted to OUR tree by someone who has access to OUR tree.
Patches are great, but commits are better.

Post by Caleb Cushing

Post by Peter Alfredsen
This isn't a quick fix.
You'll have to work with people and
that can sometimes be frustrating.

I already have to 'work' with these people, the difference would be
to mean something... if you don't have that, you seem to
auto-magically get less respect, than you would if you did have it.

Your demands because of your feelings of entitlement are what are costing you
respect.

Post by Caleb Cushing

Post by Peter Alfredsen
But you'll get to be part of the
development process and you'll get to work with the things you care
about.

you mean I'll be part of 'a' development process and work on some of
the things I care about. Obviously stepping on other developers toes
seems to be a taboo.

Yes, it's extremely frowned upon to step on another developers toes; Gentoo is
not a one-man show. Would you like ME to stomp all over your tree? Didn't think so.

Just so we're clear. I really hope you change your attitude and take Peter
Alfredsen (loki_val) up on his generous offer.

Marijn

- --
Sarcasm puts the iron in irony, cynicism the steel.

Marijn Schouten (hkBst), Gentoo Lisp project, Gentoo ML
<http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/lisp/>, #gentoo-{lisp,ml} on FreeNode

[Caleb Cushing]

Post by Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
I've found that git's patches aren't really what we want in the case of bumping.
 For bug reports we usually ask for a patch against the last ebuild in the tree.
Is there perhaps a way to make git do that automatically?

well, git has copy detection, you can tell if a file is merely a copy
of the previous (if git format-patch is done right) you can also just
do a diff on it? you could probably put it in a hook. or write a
script... or numerous other ways. once the work is done, getting any
amount of varying diffs is easy.

the problem with git right now, is all the things that gentoo does for
cvs and rsync. git doesn't need as much manifesting, it doesn't need
the cvs headers, or ChangeLog files, all this stuff just clutters
things with git. but this is a 'right now' problem, that I'm working
to solve, most of it leads right back to manifests.

Post by Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
It's great that people are doing their own thing, but to get it into OUR tree it
will need to be comitted to OUR tree by someone who has access to OUR tree.
Patches are great, but commits are better.

yes but your commit process is made more complicated by your tools. I
for the most part require that the entire commit be ready to go.

Post by Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
Your demands because of your feelings of entitlement are what are costing you
respect.

why do people keep telling me what I feel? anyone else ever notice
feelings don't convey well over text.

Post by Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
Yes, it's extremely frowned upon to step on another developers toes; Gentoo is
not a one-man show. Would you like ME to stomp all over your tree? Didn't think so.

that depends on what you mean by 'stomp' if by stomp you mean fix
problems for users, stomp away. if by stomp you mean break stuff, then
no. I don't care if you change something I changed if it's better,
it's better.

Post by Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
Just so we're clear. I really hope you change your attitude and take Peter
Alfredsen (loki_val) up on his generous offer.

and my attitude is? what is it that you think I think?

I may take him up. but I'm also considering the possible conflict of
interest, as well as the additional time requirement. I hope you
understand. even if I do I have a commitment to what I've already
started.

[Marijn Schouten (hkBst)]

Post by Caleb Cushing

Post by Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
Your demands because of your feelings of entitlement are what are costing you
respect.

why do people keep telling me what I feel? anyone else ever notice
feelings don't convey well over text.

Well, you spoke of "owing users", and "the right to open a bug and watch for
progress reports" combined with this:

"right now you are the kind of person that thinks being a volunteer is a
privilege and not a responsibility. You think that because you don't get paid
that you don't have to do it. I assure you that if you look at most non foss
volunteer jobs you either have to do your job or quit. it is the same in open
source. perhaps I'm judging you wrongly." --
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=260582#c6

It seems like you want to tell us how to do our jobs. It seems like you think
you have the right to tell us what to do. Now, I'm happy to be wrong about those
views, but that's what it looks like to me.

Post by Caleb Cushing

Post by Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
Yes, it's extremely frowned upon to step on another developers toes; Gentoo is
not a one-man show. Would you like ME to stomp all over your tree? Didn't think so.

that depends on what you mean by 'stomp' if by stomp you mean fix
problems for users, stomp away. if by stomp you mean break stuff, then
no. I don't care if you change something I changed if it's better,
it's better.

The point is that you don't know whether someone else has a good judgement of
better. People that have been taking care of certain parts of the tree may just
know something you don't. This is why we encourage people to talk to maintainers
when they touch their packages but also encourage maintainers not to feel too
possessive.

Post by Caleb Cushing

Post by Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
Just so we're clear. I really hope you change your attitude and take Peter
Alfredsen (loki_val) up on his generous offer.

and my attitude is? what is it that you think I think?

I've answered that above.

Post by Caleb Cushing
I may take him up. but I'm also considering the possible conflict of
interest, as well as the additional time requirement. I hope you
understand. even if I do I have a commitment to what I've already
started.

On your blog[1] you imply that if you decide to not, that you wouldn't be able
to "to talk to people to understand something". I just want to stress that this
is not so. Many of us are available on #gentoo-dev-help and this mailing list
for technical questions.

Marijn

[1]:http://xenoterracide.blogspot.com/2009/03/to-gentoo-dev-or-not-to-gentoo-dev.html

- --
Sarcasm puts the iron in irony, cynicism the steel.

Marijn Schouten (hkBst), Gentoo Lisp project, Gentoo ML
<http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/lisp/>, #gentoo-{lisp,ml} on FreeNode

[Caleb Cushing]

On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 7:12 AM, Marijn Schouten (hkBst)

Post by Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
"right now you are the kind of person that thinks being a volunteer is a
privilege and not a responsibility. You think that because you don't get paid
that you don't have to do it. I assure you that if you look at most non foss
volunteer jobs you either have to do your job or quit. it is the same in open
source. perhaps I'm judging you wrongly." --
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=260582#c6
It seems like you want to tell us how to do our jobs. It seems like you think
you have the right to tell us what to do. Now, I'm happy to be wrong about those
views, but that's what it looks like to me.

and what's your perspective? who gets to tell you what to do? it's not
that I get to. but what I said I do believe, is common among foss
developers. they don't take volunteering as a responsibility. They
don't think of it as their other job. I think they should. It's also a
pet peeve of mine so I kinda flew off the handle.

question is do you understand what I've written? given your statement
below on my blogpost on what you think I've implied (I'll respond
directly) you might be wrong about this to.

this is also the reason that I have to carefully consider being a
gentoo dev. if I do, I have a responsibility to the users of my
packages.

Post by Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
The point is that you don't know whether someone else has a good judgement of
better. People that have been taking care of certain parts of the tree may just
know something you don't. This is why we encourage people to talk to maintainers
when they touch their packages but also encourage maintainers not to feel too
possessive.

sometimes it's just a difference of opinion. it depends on your
opinion of "what's right" and "what's better". but sometimes even the
smartest person is wrong. I do not claim to be always right, and I'm
most certainly not.

but I don't think I'm wrong when I say it's wrong not to version bump
a package when all it takes is the copy of a previous ebuild. I don't
think I'm wrong when a bug is put on hold due to other bugs, (for 6+
months) but the maintainer never answers what other bugs.

Post by Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
On your blog[1] you imply that if you decide to not, that you wouldn't be able
to "to talk to people to understand something". I just want to stress that this
is not so. Many of us are available on #gentoo-dev-help and this mailing list
for technical questions.

no that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that it's easier to
get help if you got 1 or more specific mentor's to help you. asking
for help on irc, forums, mailing lists, is often a crap shoot at best.
given I get help more often than not. but sometimes you still don't
get any (for various reasons, don't know, don't care, not around,
don't understand). You read an implication that I didn't actually say.

[Marijn Schouten (hkBst)]

Post by Caleb Cushing
On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 7:12 AM, Marijn Schouten (hkBst)

Post by Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
"right now you are the kind of person that thinks being a volunteer is a
privilege and not a responsibility. You think that because you don't get paid
that you don't have to do it. I assure you that if you look at most non foss
volunteer jobs you either have to do your job or quit. it is the same in open
source. perhaps I'm judging you wrongly." --
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=260582#c6
It seems like you want to tell us how to do our jobs. It seems like you think
you have the right to tell us what to do. Now, I'm happy to be wrong about those
views, but that's what it looks like to me.

and what's your perspective? who gets to tell you what to do? it's not
that I get to. but what I said I do believe, is common among foss
developers. they don't take volunteering as a responsibility. They
don't think of it as their other job. I think they should. It's also a
pet peeve of mine so I kinda flew off the handle.

Why do you think they should?

Post by Caleb Cushing
question is do you understand what I've written? given your statement
below on my blogpost on what you think I've implied (I'll respond
directly) you might be wrong about this to.
this is also the reason that I have to carefully consider being a
gentoo dev. if I do, I have a responsibility to the users of my
packages.

Post by Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
The point is that you don't know whether someone else has a good judgement of
better. People that have been taking care of certain parts of the tree may just
know something you don't. This is why we encourage people to talk to maintainers
when they touch their packages but also encourage maintainers not to feel too
possessive.

sometimes it's just a difference of opinion. it depends on your
opinion of "what's right" and "what's better". but sometimes even the
smartest person is wrong. I do not claim to be always right, and I'm
most certainly not.
but I don't think I'm wrong when I say it's wrong not to version bump
a package when all it takes is the copy of a previous ebuild. I don't
think I'm wrong when a bug is put on hold due to other bugs, (for 6+
months) but the maintainer never answers what other bugs.

No, you are not wrong, but it does not follow that the people who are already
investing time towards similar issues are slackers. It's a manpower issue. Even
trivial bumps have to be tested and bugzilla is there such that it can help each
developer work more efficiently.

Post by Caleb Cushing

Post by Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
On your blog[1] you imply that if you decide to not, that you wouldn't be able
to "to talk to people to understand something". I just want to stress that this
is not so. Many of us are available on #gentoo-dev-help and this mailing list
for technical questions.

no that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that it's easier to
get help if you got 1 or more specific mentor's to help you. asking
for help on irc, forums, mailing lists, is often a crap shoot at best.
given I get help more often than not. but sometimes you still don't
get any (for various reasons, don't know, don't care, not around,
don't understand). You read an implication that I didn't actually say.

I just wanted to make my point. It isn't really material whether you implied
what I said you did or not.

Marijn

- --
Sarcasm puts the iron in irony, cynicism the steel.

Marijn Schouten (hkBst), Gentoo Lisp project, Gentoo ML
<http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/lisp/>, #gentoo-{lisp,ml} on FreeNode

[Caleb Cushing]

On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Marijn Schouten (hkBst)

Post by Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
Why do you think they should?

you must have not read what I said on that bugtracker because I'm
thought I was pretty clear, that when you work as a volunteer it's
still a job. Don't believe me, go volunteer for community service or
something. Then try saying I don't have to I'm a volunteer. They might
just ask you to leave on that note.

[Marijn Schouten (hkBst)]

Post by Caleb Cushing
On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Marijn Schouten (hkBst)

Post by Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
Why do you think they should?

you must have not read what I said on that bugtracker because I'm
thought I was pretty clear, that when you work as a volunteer it's
still a job. Don't believe me, go volunteer for community service or
something. Then try saying I don't have to I'm a volunteer. They might
just ask you to leave on that note.

You don't even know how much time these people spend on Gentoo. If you make them
leave it will stretch the other developers more and decrease the number of
manhours spent on Gentoo. In what universe is this useful? It certainly won't
get xorg-server bumped faster or ghc or some java packages. Don't you get that?

Marijn

- --
Sarcasm puts the iron in irony, cynicism the steel.

Marijn Schouten (hkBst), Gentoo Lisp project, Gentoo ML
<http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/lisp/>, #gentoo-{lisp,ml} on FreeNode

[Caleb Cushing]

On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Marijn Schouten (hkBst)

Post by Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
Don't you get that?

the janitor gets hit by a car and no ones around to clean the
bathrooms. You can't fire him because of contract, his job has to be
waiting for him when he gets back in 2 months. what do you do?

the answer is you get someone else to do it.

If you had really been prepared you already had 2 or more janitors.

the answer is not to fire people, but not to be as reliant on single
points of failure. if you make it more than 1 persons job then when 1
person can't do it there's another there to pick up the slack, who's
just as competent.

[Rémi Cardona]

Post by Caleb Cushing
If you had really been prepared you already had 2 or more janitors.

While I really appreciate you comparing us to janitors, ...

Post by Caleb Cushing
the answer is not to fire people, but not to be as reliant on single
points of failure. if you make it more than 1 persons job then when 1
person can't do it there's another there to pick up the slack, who's
just as competent.

... I would say you're both right and wrong on that point.

I happen to believe we've been pretty good at reducing our global "bus
factor". There's more communication between teams and a lot of devs
belong to multiple teams.

We could do better, sure, but we're much better than a year or two ago.

And to close off, I'll say a few things about your attitude back in bug
260582.

#1 : I closed that bug because we already know about bumps. Polluting
our bug list with stuff we're _already_ working on is both useless for
you and annoying for us.

#2 : One of the point of the X11 overlay is to literally shove stuff
that is too broken/untested to hit portage. So by all means, nothing in
this overlay is supported (in the traditional Gentoo sense).

#3 : When we feel xorg 1.6 is ready for portage, we'll just push it
there. By the time we go back to bugzilla to close the bug, you'll
already know about it.

#4 : I work on Gentoo because I like it and I do take the responsibility
very seriously. I don't need you or anyone else to tell me that I "need
to do my job". That's just condescending and downright rude.

So, I'll leave this bug open because I definitely don't want to start a
flamewar over this, but do know that you've red-flagged yourself.

I do hope though we can go all go back to fixing bugs and making Gentoo
better.

Cheers

Rémi

[Duncan]

Post by Rémi Cardona
And to close off, I'll say a few things about your attitude back in bug
260582.
#1 : I closed that bug because we already know about bumps. Polluting
our bug list with stuff we're _already_ working on is both useless for
you and annoying for us.

Not to step in the middle of that whole thing, but as a general rule, if
someone files a bump bug, it probably does make sense to comment on it
with the status, then leave it open until the ebuild hits the tree and
preferably hits ~arch. Among other useful things it:

* Let's any other user wanting to know about status that someone from
Gentoo does indeed know about it and is taking care of it, with whatever
detail the suggested comment provides. This simply makes sense as it can
avoid multiple people asking about it repeatedly, thus saving YOU time
and bother.

* Related to that, it (ideally) keeps anyone else from filing a similar
bug, as they see the still-open bug. For a bump bug especially, people
who might file a dup are even LESS likely to check closed bugs before
filing their dup, because they won't expect the bug to be closed because
after all, there's nothing in the tree yet. Again, this saves YOU time
and bother, as well as giving anyone look a hint of what's going on.

One possible exception might be for versions that you don't intend to put
in the tree anyway. Those bugs could be closed if desired, but given the
above, it may make sense to leave them open at least until the next
version is out, simply to decrease the possible dup hassle factor as much
as possible.

The bug in discussion is a case in point. I might not have filed a bug
on it, but I was certainly wondering about it, and finding that bug both
gave me some sort of tentative target to look forward to and avoided my
asking, either in bug form or on say the desktop list (more likely since
I know some folks don't like those bump bugs), what the plan was. There
are or likely will be others...

So yeah, a bump bug might be a bother, but it's worth taking the
pragmatic view and believing that the first one may well prevent others,
if it's dealt with properly.

[Caleb Cushing]

Post by Rémi Cardona
While I really appreciate you comparing us to janitors, ...

it's an analogy, get over it. I could have called you a secretary or a
school teacher, or bus driver, or basically any other job where a
replacement has to be found if the regular can't be around. maybe I
should have called it 'custodial services expert' or some other 3 word
title.

Post by Rémi Cardona
So, I'll leave this bug open because I definitely don't want to start a flamewar over this, but do know > that you've red-flagged yourself.

thank you for that. I'm glad to know you've taken this personally. it
means I really hit home.

[Caleb Cushing]

and now I'm going to walk away from this thread before I sink myself
to even lower pointless comments.

[Marijn Schouten (hkBst)]

Post by Caleb Cushing
On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Marijn Schouten (hkBst)

Post by Marijn Schouten (hkBst)
Don't you get that?

the janitor gets hit by a car and no ones around to clean the
bathrooms. You can't fire him because of contract, his job has to be
waiting for him when he gets back in 2 months. what do you do?

We make do. That means that someone else might drop (some of) their tasks to
step in. In the end, less total work will get done.

Post by Caleb Cushing
the answer is you get someone else to do it.

Aha, so this is what the community service project is gonna do after they chase
away their volunteers! They hire professionals instead. Good thing they are
never short on cash. Fortunately we have a never-ending supply of Gentoo-credits
and they are just as good as real money. We can even give all current developers
a 10% raise while we're spending money anyway.

Marijn

- --
Sarcasm puts the iron in irony, cynicism the steel.

Marijn Schouten (hkBst), Gentoo Lisp project, Gentoo ML
<http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/lisp/>, #gentoo-{lisp,ml} on FreeNode

[Thilo Bangert]

Bugs aren't a good way to keep in touch with developers, that's what
irc is for.

while i dont necessarily think, that bugzi is the best way to stay in
contact with me, it surely is a better way than IRC - on which i am close
to never.

the presumption seems to be, that as a dev one has to be available via
IRC. it has long been my feeling that Gentoo as a project could realize
more of its potential by better integrating people who dont do IRC.

kind regards
Thilo

[Fabian Groffen]

Post by Thilo Bangert

Bugs aren't a good way to keep in touch with developers, that's what
irc is for.

while i dont necessarily think, that bugzi is the best way to stay in
contact with me, it surely is a better way than IRC - on which i am close
to never.
the presumption seems to be, that as a dev one has to be available via
IRC. it has long been my feeling that Gentoo as a project could realize
more of its potential by better integrating people who dont do IRC.

+1

[Markos Chandras]

Post by Thilo Bangert

Bugs aren't a good way to keep in touch with developers, that's what
irc is for.

while i dont necessarily think, that bugzi is the best way to stay in
contact with me, it surely is a better way than IRC - on which i am close
to never.
the presumption seems to be, that as a dev one has to be available via
IRC. it has long been my feeling that Gentoo as a project could realize
more of its potential by better integrating people who dont do IRC.
kind regards
Thilo

To be honest , I don't agree with that. Being around on irc is quite helpful
to get direct feedback from users and fix bugs before they hit more users.
This is a good way to reduce the amount of bugs that hit bugzilla.

[Lukasz Damentko]

Post by Thilo Bangert
Gentoo as a project could realize
more of its potential by better integrating people who dont do IRC.

Yes. Let's integrate them by introducing IRC to them.

[AllenJB]

Post by Markos Chandras

Post by Thilo Bangert

Bugs aren't a good way to keep in touch with developers, that's what
irc is for.

while i dont necessarily think, that bugzi is the best way to stay in
contact with me, it surely is a better way than IRC - on which i am close
to never.
the presumption seems to be, that as a dev one has to be available via
IRC. it has long been my feeling that Gentoo as a project could realize
more of its potential by better integrating people who dont do IRC.
kind regards
Thilo

To be honest , I don't agree with that. Being around on irc is quite helpful
to get direct feedback from users and fix bugs before they hit more users.
This is a good way to reduce the amount of bugs that hit bugzilla.

While IRC is undoubtedly a useful communication medium, it is pretty
much a "here and now" thing. I believe that Gentoo would benefit quite a
lot if teams started using more permanent forms of communication such as
blogs, wikis or websites. Not only would this allow the current set of
developers within a team to know what one another are up to and what
needs to be done, but it would also allow those who are not so
intimately involved (both other devs, contributors and users) to keep up
to date and contribute as well as leaving something for future
developers to be able to look back on and see what options /
improvements / etc were considered / done in the past.

I recently wrote a blog post that went somewhat along these lines:
http://allenjb.me.uk/blog/why-only-think-about-projects-for-gsoc

As someone who's very interested in getting involved in Gentoo
Development, I often find it hard to gather information on what projects
/ people are up to, what's currently going on and what the plans for the
future are.


AllenJB

[AllenJB]

Post by AllenJB

Post by Markos Chandras

Post by Thilo Bangert

Bugs aren't a good way to keep in touch with developers, that's what
irc is for.

while i dont necessarily think, that bugzi is the best way to stay in
contact with me, it surely is a better way than IRC - on which i am close
to never.
the presumption seems to be, that as a dev one has to be available via
IRC. it has long been my feeling that Gentoo as a project could realize
more of its potential by better integrating people who dont do IRC.
kind regards
Thilo

To be honest , I don't agree with that. Being around on irc is
quite helpful to get direct feedback from users and fix bugs before
they hit more users. This is a good way to reduce the amount of bugs
that hit bugzilla.

While IRC is undoubtedly a useful communication medium, it is pretty
much a "here and now" thing. I believe that Gentoo would benefit quite a
lot if teams started using more permanent forms of communication such as
blogs, wikis or websites. Not only would this allow the current set of
developers within a team to know what one another are up to and what
needs to be done, but it would also allow those who are not so
intimately involved (both other devs, contributors and users) to keep up
to date and contribute as well as leaving something for future
developers to be able to look back on and see what options /
improvements / etc were considered / done in the past.
http://allenjb.me.uk/blog/why-only-think-about-projects-for-gsoc
As someone who's very interested in getting involved in Gentoo
Development, I often find it hard to gather information on what projects
/ people are up to, what's currently going on and what the plans for the
future are.
AllenJB

Just wanted to quickly add mailing lists to the explicitly mentioned
venues for improved communication.

As a quick example, I'm interested in the PR / Newsletter side of
Gentoo, but I find it very hard to keep up-to-date. I recently learned
that there's a new blog-like version of the newsletter in development
but I've heard nothing else about it and searching hasn't turned up
anything.

While I am on the gmn irc channel, I don't have time to read through all
the backlogs for relvent information. I am also on the gentoo-pr mailing
list (among many others, as well as checking on the lists via gmane) and
it's basically completely silent. I'm currently waiting to catch one of
two devs who might be able to give me more information on IRC.

To all eyes looking from the outside in, unless they happen across the
one forum thread I did, the newsletter is dead and nothing is being done
about it, which gives a poor view of the state of affairs within Gentoo
Development.

To take the bus analogy to this, if these 2 developers are hit by a bus,
then who knows what's currently going on with the newsletter and where
all the resources are?

I have said it before and I will say it again, yes the newsletter may be
a current weak point for Gentoo, but it's a very obvious one because
it's the one that's visible to everyone in the community. I still think
my points are valid for any area of Gentoo development tho.

AllenJB

[Steev Klimaszewski]

memoserv

[AllenJB]

Post by Steev Klimaszewski
memoserv

Did you not read a single word of what I just said? memoserv only allows
1-1 communication. I'm talking about methods which allow for 1:many or
many:many. memoserv also doesn't solve the bus issue or really provide
any permanent record of communication (AFAIK there's no SLA on memoserv,
which means if Freeserve decides to delete all your memos tomorrow, they
are gone for good).

Websites and mailing lists don't have these issues because they get
archived and mirrored everywhere (gmane, google, archive.org) - a fact
which made itself very apparent when Gentoo Wiki went down last year
(where virtually all the old content was recovered from google cache and
mirrored, as well as being available 6 months later on archive.org).

<Stops before he repeats even more of what he just said>

AllenJB

[Thilo Bangert]

Post by Markos Chandras

Post by Thilo Bangert

Bugs aren't a good way to keep in touch with developers, that's
what irc is for.

while i dont necessarily think, that bugzi is the best way to stay in
contact with me, it surely is a better way than IRC - on which i am
close to never.
the presumption seems to be, that as a dev one has to be available
via IRC. it has long been my feeling that Gentoo as a project could
realize more of its potential by better integrating people who dont
do IRC.
kind regards
Thilo

To be honest , I don't agree with that. Being around on irc is quite
helpful to get direct feedback from users and fix bugs before they hit
more users. This is a good way to reduce the amount of bugs that hit
bugzilla.

my complaint isn't about people using IRC. i object to the way that much
of our knowledge, discussion and decision making process appear to have
been moved into the temporal black hole that is IRC.

realtime communication is an valuable tool, but IRC has drawbacks as well.
this is alienating a lot of people who dont happen to be on IRC at the
right moment/timezone or who dont have the time to be always on.

it looks like many projects within Gentoo have resorted to a communication
process which uses IRC exclusivly. this is unfortunate...

kind regards
Thilo

[Maciej Mrozowski]

Post by Thilo Bangert
my complaint isn't about people using IRC. i object to the way that much
of our knowledge, discussion and decision making process appear to have
been moved into the temporal black hole that is IRC.
realtime communication is an valuable tool, but IRC has drawbacks as well.
this is alienating a lot of people who dont happen to be on IRC at the
right moment/timezone or who dont have the time to be always on.
it looks like many projects within Gentoo have resorted to a communication
process which uses IRC exclusivly. this is unfortunate...

Hard to disagree with this.
I observed it myself - when I started maintaining ebuilds in overlay,
consequently I started to use IRC to be in touch with the rest of KDE Gentoo
team. Unfortunately it has some drawbacks like less my availability on forums
(and I used it much more often) - to the point that I forgot to update whole
4.2 release announcement in Desktop Environment (in that sticky "Read before
posting" thread).
IRC is black hole definitely and from developers point of view everything looks
just, as they actively communicating with each other - unfortunately being
somewhat isolated from the rest of the world.
This may increase that feeling from typical user point of view - that
developers are somewhere there cooking something, and there's no way to get to
them (unless they find about IRC).
This is the problem as most users used to sweep forums first as it's "medium"
available for them out of the box - just google for some problem and there you
are.

Now, important.
While I don't propose for developers to visit forums - it may be another
*solution*.
Developers - they (we/you) already chosen IRC as best/fastest/favourite medium
for communication apart from mailing list that is - it could stay that way.

Why not integrate more users by creating *Support* *staff* role?
They could be recruited as typical staff (like moderators) - using staff quiz.
Their "job" would be to:
- wander on forums answering user questions
- poke developers on IRC with some issues (maybe proposed patches)
- filling bugzilla bugs (they'd need some *basic* bugzilla knowledge - just to
be able to find whether are such issues already and to properly, descriptively
create new bug) - not full bugwrangling with assigning and such
- provide living evidence that "Gentoo is not dying" whatever and has support

They could be given @gentoo.org aliases to make them motivated.
It would be easier for those alike to become developers later.

There's thread related to user contribution on forums - as reference:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-702248.html

(this should rather be discussed on gentoo-project I guess, but nm)

[Markos Chandras]

Post by Thilo Bangert

Post by Markos Chandras

Post by Thilo Bangert

Bugs aren't a good way to keep in touch with developers, that's
what irc is for.

while i dont necessarily think, that bugzi is the best way to stay in
contact with me, it surely is a better way than IRC - on which i am
close to never.
the presumption seems to be, that as a dev one has to be available
via IRC. it has long been my feeling that Gentoo as a project could
realize more of its potential by better integrating people who dont
do IRC.
kind regards
Thilo

To be honest , I don't agree with that. Being around on irc is quite
helpful to get direct feedback from users and fix bugs before they hit
more users. This is a good way to reduce the amount of bugs that hit
bugzilla.

my complaint isn't about people using IRC. i object to the way that much
of our knowledge, discussion and decision making process appear to have
been moved into the temporal black hole that is IRC.
realtime communication is an valuable tool, but IRC has drawbacks as well.
this is alienating a lot of people who dont happen to be on IRC at the
right moment/timezone or who dont have the time to be always on.
it looks like many projects within Gentoo have resorted to a communication
process which uses IRC exclusivly. this is unfortunate...
kind regards
Thilo

I would prefer it if devs were using team emails ( ***@gentoo.org,
***@gentoo.org etc ) more often than IRC communication. At least, important
discussions, or decisions etc should at least announced on such mailing lists.
If this is not possible, an e-mail with the irc logs about an important
discussion would be a good idea. Of course this is not necessary in occasions
were teams are composed by 1-2 members or when all developers of the team are
available on irc.

[Donnie Berkholz]

Post by Thilo Bangert
the presumption seems to be, that as a dev one has to be available
via IRC. it has long been my feeling that Gentoo as a project
could realize more of its potential by better integrating people
who dont do IRC.

I think IRC helps to build a more tightly knit community and, because of
this, is very important to Gentoo. The less close we are as a community,
the more free we feel to be hostile because we don't see the folks on
the other end of the big tube as real people. It's much like a technique
that militaries use during wars to de-personalize the enemy, except with
the Internet, we start that way and have to apply effort to grow closer.

[AllenJB]

Post by Donnie Berkholz

Post by Thilo Bangert
the presumption seems to be, that as a dev one has to be available
via IRC. it has long been my feeling that Gentoo as a project
could realize more of its potential by better integrating people
who dont do IRC.

I think IRC helps to build a more tightly knit community and, because of
this, is very important to Gentoo. The less close we are as a community,
the more free we feel to be hostile because we don't see the folks on
the other end of the big tube as real people. It's much like a technique
that militaries use during wars to de-personalize the enemy, except with
the Internet, we start that way and have to apply effort to grow closer.

While it may be tight nit, there's the danger that it's so tight no one
else can get in, so to speak.

I don't think anyone's saying anything like "no more IRC". What I at
least am advocating is that what goes on on IRC gets summarized
somewhere in addition. As I said before, this not only helps keep a
"log" of what goes on for "future generations", but also allows others
(users and devs who don't have time to follow everything) to look in and
follow what the devs are doing more easily.

I think that this would ultimately help make Gentoo development more
visible and more accessible, ultimately leading to an increased
conversion of users to contributors, if not users to devs.

AllenJB

[Tomáš Chvátal]

I think that summarizing "IRC" is insane. Remember we barely got
summaries of council meetings (which are at a fixed time and date)
until we got a secretary devoted explicitly to that task. Maybe more
teams should take up the meeting model; that way non-IRC folks can
either be on IRC for meeting times only, or peruse the meeting notes
afterwards if they are interested in what happened.

Well we are quite able to handle it on kde meetings, so users get what are we
working on (or at least the big parts). :]
But i am pretty sure that it would be nice to have some tool where we put
major stuff we are on so others can see :]

Tomas

[Alec Warner]

Post by Donnie Berkholz

Post by Thilo Bangert
the presumption seems to be, that as a dev one has to be available via
IRC. it has long been my feeling that Gentoo as a project could realize more
of its potential by better integrating people who dont do IRC.

I think IRC helps to build a more tightly knit community and, because of
this, is very important to Gentoo. The less close we are as a community, the
more free we feel to be hostile because we don't see the folks on the other
end of the big tube as real people. It's much like a technique that
militaries use during wars to de-personalize the enemy, except with the
Internet, we start that way and have to apply effort to grow closer.

While it may be tight nit, there's the danger that it's so tight no one else
can get in, so to speak.
I don't think anyone's saying anything like "no more IRC". What I at least
am advocating is that what goes on on IRC gets summarized somewhere in
addition. As I said before, this not only helps keep a "log" of what goes on
for "future generations", but also allows others (users and devs who don't
have time to follow everything) to look in and follow what the devs are
doing more easily.

I think that summarizing "IRC" is insane. Remember we barely got
summaries of council meetings (which are at a fixed time and date)
until we got a secretary devoted explicitly to that task. Maybe more
teams should take up the meeting model; that way non-IRC folks can
either be on IRC for meeting times only, or peruse the meeting notes
afterwards if they are interested in what happened.

I think that this would ultimately help make Gentoo development more visible
and more accessible, ultimately leading to an increased conversion of users
to contributors, if not users to devs.
AllenJB

[Thilo Bangert]

I think that summarizing "IRC" is insane.

and there is no need for it either. as stated elsewhere much of what is
going on on IRC is 'goofing off' - for which IRC is excellent. (heck - i
should goof off more often :-)

i dont mind the day-to-day work stuff going on on IRC exclusively - but
when discussions about the future directions of a project and the decision
making process are held on IRC exclusively, then that is not helpful in
attracting new blood. for one because there is no history but also because
they may not use IRC that much.

Remember we barely got
summaries of council meetings (which are at a fixed time and date)
until we got a secretary devoted explicitly to that task.
Maybe more
teams should take up the meeting model; that way non-IRC folks can
either be on IRC for meeting times only, or peruse the meeting notes
afterwards if they are interested in what happened.

yeah - the kde team is leading the way here. granted - this model may not
work for everybody...

regards
Thilo

[Thilo Bangert]

Post by Donnie Berkholz

Post by Thilo Bangert
the presumption seems to be, that as a dev one has to be
available via IRC. it has long been my feeling that Gentoo as a
project could realize more of its potential by better integrating
people who dont do IRC.

I think IRC helps to build a more tightly knit community and, because
of this, is very important to Gentoo. The less close we are as a
community, the more free we feel to be hostile because we don't see the
folks on the other end of the big tube as real people. It's much like a
technique that militaries use during wars to de-personalize the enemy,
except with the Internet, we start that way and have to apply effort to
grow closer.

so you say, that presumption is ok? i agree 100% with what you say, but it
doesnt (at least directly) address my concern. i think IRC is an excellent
medium - the problems i see, though, are related to the fact that IRC
requires all stakeholders to be available at the time of discussion. for a
multitude of reasons this can almost never be guaranteed. also, even if we
did have IRC logs, the signal to noise ratio on IRC is devastating (at
least in my experience).

for those reasons, i would like to see more bridge-building between the
worlds. i didnt want to give examples, as i dont like pointing fingers,
but here it is: relengs discussion to switch to weekly autobuilds.
presumably there hast been one, but i cant find it in the list archives.
not on gentoo-***@g.o and not on gentoo-***@g.o - where else should i
look? IRC perhaps - well, where are the logs? interestingly, the
announcement of the switch has a pointer to the releng project page, which
does not even mention the IRC channel.

from looking at the releng mailing list one gets the impression that
releng in gentoo is dead. its not - i know and am greatful for the hard
work everybody in releng puts in - but it makes the releng project much
less accessible. to follow, or contribute.

thanks for listening
kind regards
Thilo

[Donnie Berkholz]

Post by Thilo Bangert

Post by Donnie Berkholz

Post by Thilo Bangert
the presumption seems to be, that as a dev one has to be
available via IRC. it has long been my feeling that Gentoo as
a project could realize more of its potential by better
integrating people who dont do IRC.

I think IRC helps to build a more tightly knit community and,
because of this, is very important to Gentoo. The less close we are
as a community, the more free we feel to be hostile because we don't
see the folks on the other end of the big tube as real people. It's
much like a technique that militaries use during wars to
de-personalize the enemy, except with the Internet, we start that
way and have to apply effort to grow closer.

so you say, that presumption is ok?

Honestly, yes. Gentoo development (and users too!) is a very
IRC-centered community, and I think IRC is one of the reasons it is a
strong development community. Parts of the forums are similarly critical
to building a strong user community (Gentoo Chat, Off the Wall), as is
the Gentoo Universe for developers.

IRC is a lot like this mailing list in some ways. Even as developers,
you can choose not to participate, and consequently you have to deal
with the decisions you chose not to be part of making when you hear
about them after the fact on -dev-announce.

Post by Thilo Bangert
i agree 100% with what you say, but it doesnt (at least directly)
address my concern. i think IRC is an excellent medium - the problems
i see, though, are related to the fact that IRC requires all
stakeholders to be available at the time of discussion. for a
multitude of reasons this can almost never be guaranteed. also, even
if we did have IRC logs, the signal to noise ratio on IRC is
devastating (at least in my experience).

I agree that all stakeholders (to use your term) ought to participate
before a decision, but even on IRC this doesn't mean they all have to be
present simultaneously. In my experience, a few stakeholders are around
at a time, and they're able to have a lot of very fast real-time
discussion that would be vastly slowed down by a mailing list. Then a
few hours later, maybe a couple of the same people will be around and a
couple new stakeholders. The new ones catch up and have some more fast
back-and-forth.

Post by Thilo Bangert
for those reasons, i would like to see more bridge-building between
the worlds. i didnt want to give examples, as i dont like pointing
fingers, but here it is: relengs discussion to switch to weekly
autobuilds. presumably there hast been one, but i cant find it in the
where else should i look? IRC perhaps - well, where are the logs?
interestingly, the announcement of the switch has a pointer to the
releng project page, which does not even mention the IRC channel.

I agree that important decisions deserve summaries instead of hiding out
anywhere, whether it's buried in IRC discussions or archived
mailing-list threads!

[Michael Higgins]

On Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:09:04 -0700

Post by Donnie Berkholz

Post by Thilo Bangert
the presumption seems to be, that as a dev one has to be
available via IRC. it has long been my feeling that Gentoo as a
project could realize more of its potential by better
integrating people who dont do IRC.

I think IRC helps to build a more tightly knit community and, because
of this, is very important to Gentoo. The less close we are as a
community, the more free we feel to be hostile because we don't see
the folks on the other end of the big tube as real people. It's much
like a technique that militaries use during wars to de-personalize
the enemy, except with the Internet, we start that way and have to
apply effort to grow closer.

This is an interesting point you raise, though I don't think it applies in this case.

I believe, rather, that the issue is the 'community' appears more like a 'cabal' when the discussions take place on #IRC and therefore aren't available in public archives.

Even if they are, an IRC log is a *terrible* way to document an issue.

Since the discussion is Re: '*DEVS* on IRC', I think the problem should be clear:

You all get more closely knit, perhaps, yet appear to do more *in secret*. There is *no way* to find out what is going on, without becoming part of the problem... by asking, or lurking, on IRC. This is bad.

Example? After months of searching for a reason, after seeing many apparently random updates to a previously stable tree of perl modules, I happen to keep an IRC session log which shows with this FSCKING USEFUL TIDBIT:

"... no motivated developers. the perl team completely vanished."

Anyone considering using Gentoo should KNOW that, if they use perl in any substantive way. Wouldn't you agree?

Now, why isn't there a discussion about this on the gentoo-perl mailing list? Not even a post from some DEV with a cry for HELP? If there's a problem, *who* is doing *what* to address it, and *where*?

Oh, right, there's *some* discussion on IRC...

Anyway, it's just one example. In this case, I'd be glad to see *some* documentation of the (apparent total) collapse of the 'perl team' and what is being proposed to fix the problem, *without* having to become part of the cabal.

Since there is a mailing list dedicated for discussions of perl and gentoo, that seems the most logical place to air the dirty laundry and announce/discuss the plan for moving forward. IMO.

Cheers,

[Duncan]

Post by Michael Higgins
Example? After months of searching for a reason, after seeing many
apparently random updates to a previously stable tree of perl modules, I
happen to keep an IRC session log which shows with this FSCKING USEFUL
"... no motivated developers. the perl team completely vanished."
Anyone considering using Gentoo should KNOW that, if they use perl in
any substantive way. Wouldn't you agree?

Indeed.

Post by Michael Higgins
Anyway, it's just one example. In this case, I'd be glad to see *some*
documentation of the (apparent total) collapse of the 'perl team' and
what is being proposed to fix the problem, *without* having to become
part of the cabal.

And thanks for providing a bit of that documentation here. That is in
fact one of the reasons I follow this list, and it has in fact forewarned
me of several issues some time before I had to deal with them. I'm thus
very happy to have this list to follow. =:^)

But I had seen absolutely nothing on the above, the perl team basically
disappearing, until your documentation of it in your post. It would have
been nice to have seen a bit on the list about it previously, ideally
from a dev noting the problem and asking what we can do about it. But
given nothing from them (except apparently on IRC), I'll take what I can
get, from a user, sometime *after* I should have known about it, as a
Gentoo user concerned enough to actually follow the dev list to *get*
such information. =:^(

So thanks. Dev or nodev, I'm glad there are folks like you around! =:^)

[Donnie Berkholz]

Post by Michael Higgins
I believe, rather, that the issue is the 'community' appears more like
a 'cabal' when the discussions take place on #IRC and therefore aren't
available in public archives.

This is kind of like saying: "I don't read the Gentoo forums, so
everything that happens on the forums is a cabal." When you specifically
choose not to participate in an entire method of communication, it's
your choice to leave yourself out. A cabal is totally different -- it
doesn't give you that choice by never even telling you there is a place
where discussions happen.

Post by Michael Higgins
Even if they are, an IRC log is a *terrible* way to document an issue.

I agree. So is a mailing-list archive that is also never summarized.
It's not the location that makes it a problem, it's the volume of
information and the lack of a summary of important decisions or long,
important discussions.

Post by Michael Higgins
You all get more closely knit, perhaps, yet appear to do more *in
secret*. There is *no way* to find out what is going on, without
becoming part of the problem... by asking, or lurking, on IRC. This is
bad.

I can't agree with your assertion that IRC is secretive, is a problem or
is bad. I think completely the opposite in all cases. Secretive would be
a closed IRC network that we didn't tell non-developers about or didn't
allow them to join.

[Richard Freeman]

Post by Donnie Berkholz

Post by Michael Higgins
Even if they are, an IRC log is a *terrible* way to document an issue.

I agree. So is a mailing-list archive that is also never summarized.
It's not the location that makes it a problem, it's the volume of
information and the lack of a summary of important decisions or long,
important discussions.

I certainly don't consider the use of IRC harmful per-se or consider it
a "cabal," but I can't consider IRC and an unsummarized mailing list
equivalent communication mediums.

If I want to know what is going on in IRC I need to leave a client
connected 24x7 (and if my connection goes down for whatever reason I
just miss whatever happens). Then I need to read through thousands of
lines of banter to see what is going on.

If I want to know what is going on in a mailing list I launch my
threaded email client. If a computer goes down SMTP, IMAP, and various
redundant servers will eventually get the messages to me. The
discussion is threaded and categorized by topic, so I can mercilessly
hit delete and not have much risk of missing something I'm interested
in. Essentially even an "unsummarized" mailing list is fairly well
summarized compared to IRC.

Don't get me wrong - I like the team-building aspects of IRC. However,
it is not a good communication medium when you're dealing with
volunteers that might only spend a few hours per week total working on
Gentoo (or maybe only a few hours per month), spread across 24 time
zones. It is perfect for realtime collaboration on solving specific
problems. It is also great for brainstorming ideas, and just having
fun. Unfortunately, it also shares certain drawbacks with the phone -
for starters it tends to prioritize tasks by urgency rather than by
importance. It also encourages "shooting from the hip" - just like
having meetings without an agenda, pre-discussion, and general
preparation. No problem for trivial tasks, but not a good idea when
making final decisions of strategic importance.

However, if certain work takes place exclusively on IRC then you're
going to exclude some people. Many of those people could be strong
contributors but they might not like working in "realtime." This might
not be because of communication skills/etc - maybe they have a family
and they'd rather see what needs to be done and take care of it here and
there without being given an assignment and having 10 other people
bugging them about whether it is done yet when they have 14 other things
to do. Sure, such a dev is probably not a good candidate to be leading
a major Gentoo project, but that doesn't mean that they have little to
contribute. For example, I typed this email in one sitting but I could
have just as conveniently taken 3 days to piece it together in 5 minute
bursts.

I'd consider the current council format a good example of how IRC can be
used in conjunction with mailing lists, agendas, and scheduled meeting
times. IRC can be used to finalize thinking and make decisions. It can
also be used for informal discussion anytime before a meeting. Much of
the serious contribution is captured on mailing lists, however, and when
decisions are made it is based upon the widely-gathered input.
Everybody knows what decisions are going to be made in advance and can
show up if desired. If they can't show up they can at least contact
council members in advance (and the world at large) to state their
opinions. This certainly doesn't need to be used for every tiny Gentoo
decision - but it is a great model for how to handle things of importance.

[Duncan]

Post by Thilo Bangert
the presumption seems to be, that as a dev one has to be available via
IRC. it has long been my feeling that Gentoo as a project could realize
more of its potential by better integrating people who dont do IRC.

This has bothered me too. Some people simply don't do well in
"immediate" (textual) communication mode. They much prefer the minute-
resolution mode of email/web-form/newsgroup to the second-resolution mode
of IRC/IM. I'm one such person.[1] As a result, I have experienced a
high barrier to getting further involved with Gentoo, toward becoming an
AT or dev.

That may be simply the way things must be (after all, to take an extreme
example, who could reasonably argue that snail mail contributions could
even work at all for more than the one-off, for something like Gentoo),
but I can't say I see it that way. Even in instances where the second-
resolution of IRC really does work better, say meetings, a mixed-mode
approach much as the council has recently taken, with most of the
discussion via minute/hour resolution mailing list leaving the official
IRC meetings as ideally little more than formalizing the vote, arguably
works far better.

---
[1] I like to be able to type up my message, look at it, revise a bit
where necessary, then send, on second-resolution media such as IRC/IM,
that's hardly possible as it looks like "dead air" from the other end
when there's 2-3 participants and the discussion has usually long moved
on by the time the submission is ready, in larger groups.

[Christian Faulhammer]

Hi,

Post by Duncan

Post by Thilo Bangert
the presumption seems to be, that as a dev one has to be available
via IRC. it has long been my feeling that Gentoo as a project could
realize more of its potential by better integrating people who dont
do IRC.

This has bothered me too. Some people simply don't do well in
"immediate" (textual) communication mode. They much prefer the
minute- resolution mode of email/web-form/newsgroup to the
second-resolution mode of IRC/IM. I'm one such person.[1] As a
result, I have experienced a high barrier to getting further involved
with Gentoo, toward becoming an AT or dev.

I am a dev with sparse internet connectivity and seldomly found on
IRC...and even as an AT I chose to stay away from IRC. So I see few
problems there.

V-Li

[Thomas Anderson]

Post by Duncan

Post by Thilo Bangert
the presumption seems to be, that as a dev one has to be available via
IRC. it has long been my feeling that Gentoo as a project could realize
more of its potential by better integrating people who dont do IRC.

This has bothered me too. Some people simply don't do well in
"immediate" (textual) communication mode. They much prefer the minute-
resolution mode of email/web-form/newsgroup to the second-resolution mode
of IRC/IM. I'm one such person.[1] As a result, I have experienced a
high barrier to getting further involved with Gentoo, toward becoming an
AT or dev.

There are many devs who rarely venture on IRC, yet do a lot of good
work. As far as ATs go, it's not a necessity to be on IRC; pretty much
the only communication that occurs in #-amd64-dev is coordination of
stabilization efforts and goofing off(and the occasional xfce dev talks
:p).

[Donnie Berkholz]

Post by Duncan

Post by Thilo Bangert
the presumption seems to be, that as a dev one has to be available via
IRC. it has long been my feeling that Gentoo as a project could realize
more of its potential by better integrating people who dont do IRC.

This has bothered me too. Some people simply don't do well in
"immediate" (textual) communication mode. They much prefer the minute-
resolution mode of email/web-form/newsgroup to the second-resolution mode
of IRC/IM. I'm one such person.[1] As a result, I have experienced a
high barrier to getting further involved with Gentoo, toward becoming an
AT or dev.

One nice thing about IRC is that people get equal talking time. It's
very hard to overwhelm anyone with text.

[Thomas Anderson]

Post by Caleb Cushing

Further, overlays are good places to put ebuilds for software that is more
experimental than what's expected for ~arch. That includes live ebuilds. In the
end, overlays have a (far) lower level of guaranteed quality than the main tree,
for their ebuilds

because ~arch is supposed to work? take open bug on wine-1.1.16 it
doesn't build on amd64 and yet it's ~amd64. how about that nam ebuild
that has invalid bash that I mentioned? that's some quality work
there. The point is the tree is no better or worse than the overlays
in many cases.

Heh, that's the problem with ~arch. ~amd64 keywords aren't added for
every new version; keywords are carried over from the previous version.
Having to test each new version of a package before it receiving a
keyword puts far too much stress on the arch teams(who are struggling
under the current workload, a lot of >75 stable request bugs). What
happens is the keyword gets carried over from the previous version. So
if a developer screws up, the arch teams really have no idea because 1)
we don't get assigned any bug with our keyword in it. 2) We don't run
~arch.

[Caleb Cushing]

Post by Thomas Anderson
eh, that's the problem with ~arch. ~amd64 keywords aren't added for
every new version; keywords are carried over from the previous version.
Having to test each new version of a package before it receiving a
keyword puts far too much stress on the arch teams

I'm not talking about testing before... I was talking about removing
it after. I understand that not everything can always be tested
before. But when it's found to be broken, there shouldn't have been an
argument about the kewords removal in lieu of a proper fix.

[Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto]

Post by Caleb Cushing
I'd like to start with, I'm not trying to stir up trouble but since
questions were asked i'll answer them.

If you think neither should exist why do you have an opinion about this at all?

I merged the java-overlay into regen2 a couple of weeks ago. as of
right now I've no plans to support java-experimental.
I'm fine with overlays so long as working ebuilds spend no more than a
few weeks in them. I have my own development branch and half the stuff
that's in there that isn't in the main tree doesn't work. Things like
perl 5.10 have been rotting in an overlay for a year. Funtoo ( under
my direction ) and Regen2 have had it ~arch for over a month now. We
found one bug post release thus far. I filed a bug on xorg-server
1.6.0 not being in tree. It was resolved fixed (in overlay) (which
another bug clearly states it has amd64 build issues). since when has
(in overlay) been an acceptable solution to a missing package? I said
it before, the reason I like gentoo* distro's is I don't have to find
the repository to get the latest package, that's just a pain, in
ubuntu, in opensuse, in fedora... etc. But no more... officially
supported huge overlays have ruined this.

The single tree model is not the only one, nor necessarily the best one.
I understand your concern, but as ciaranm argued in another thread, the
issues many people seem to have with overlays are caused by the current
level of support by Portage. What we need is better support for multiple
repositories, not to drop them.
As it has been discussed before, multiple repositories could even foster
the development in Gentoo, instead of halting it down - as quite a few
people seem to be affraid of. If we can have some repositories focusing
in certain areas or relaxing access rules to a few repos, some devs
might get more focused and some packages might find new maintainers and
or their way into "mainline" Gentoo.
One issue that has been raised is about having testing ebuilds in
overlays instead of the tree. In a few cases, we have ebuilds in
overlays, not because of the lack of QA of the ebuilds, but because of
the experimental nature of the packages or because of the difficulty in
making packages comply to Gentoo rules. One example of a package that
was never in the tree, but instead on an overlay was XGL. It was never
considered to be stable enough to get into the tree. KDE-4 work started
in overlays and was kept there until 4.0 because it was more flexible to
work in the overlay than it would have been to do it in the tree. By the
way, KDE-4 is a good example of how work in overlays can help the tree -
what we had for 4.0 and have now in the tree was mostly done by people
that weren't Gentoo devs. Work in these overlays has lead to an
injection of many new devs.

...

Post by Caleb Cushing
users don't know how to hack. the very definition of user says that,
imo. There are developers, admins, and users. admins don't want
overlays, they are supposed to be unstable. users can't hack, so what
do they care. the problem is, an overlay has become a repo, I'm not
sure that it was originally intended for that.

Fortunately, Gentoo users are not like some other distributions users.
I've seen many Gentoo users working in ebuilds and quite a few working
with devs to improve the Gentoo tree.
Most admins don't like unstable packages. Unfortunately quite a few of
them have to support new (testing) packages whether they like them or not.

...

Post by Caleb Cushing

Further, overlays are good places to put ebuilds for software that is more
experimental than what's expected for ~arch. That includes live ebuilds. In the
end, overlays have a (far) lower level of guaranteed quality than the main tree,
for their ebuilds

because ~arch is supposed to work? take open bug on wine-1.1.16 it
doesn't build on amd64 and yet it's ~amd64. how about that nam ebuild
that has invalid bash that I mentioned? that's some quality work
there. The point is the tree is no better or worse than the overlays
in many cases.

If anything, I've been hearing lately complaints about the testing
branch having become the new stable branch, not that it's terribly broken.

...

Post by Caleb Cushing
I've probably already offended a large share of people on this list,
now lets see if I can offend a few more by soliciting.

I think you'll find a reasonable "tolerance level" in this ml about
technical issues and development models.

- --
Regards,

Jorge Vicetto (jmbsvicetto) - jmbsvicetto at gentoo dot org
Gentoo- forums / Userrel / Devrel / SPARC / KDE

[Alistair Bush]

Post by Caleb Cushing
I'd like to start with, I'm not trying to stir up trouble but since
questions were asked i'll answer them.

If you think neither should exist why do you have an opinion about this at all?

I merged the java-overlay into regen2 a couple of weeks ago. as of
right now I've no plans to support java-experimental.

Please don't. Until less than a month ago, it was a qa nightmare ( even
java-overlay was). Im sure both overlays probably still have
unresolvable dependencies. And yes they are an example of piss poor qa
standards. Even now im sure there is stuff in java-overlay that is be
just plain broken. I would hate to think about what java-experimental
is like.