Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
On 04/04/10 22:48, Roy Bamford wrote: Open bugs per package and mean age of bugs per package come to mind. Such per package metrics can be aggregated per herd, per project, the whole of Gentoo or whatever. A reducing mean age of bugs and open bugs shows we are moving in the right direction. We're not too far away from such numbers actually, stay tuned. I'm sure many other metrics are possible. If more comes to you mind please reply to the heartbug team force thread with it. We're interested in these ideas. Sebastian
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
Joshua Saddler wrote lots of: Thanks for sh**ting on my efforts. See, this is not about your personal efforts. I really do appreciate the work and time you invest in improving both the docs and PR. But otoh try to compare what the docs-team and PR did say 5 years ago and what they're doing today (at least what becomes visible for people outside of these projects). 5 years ago we had constantly new docs added, we still had our Gentoo Weekly Newsletter - both just some *examples*. Nothing against you personal efforts, but both (important!) areas could be improved and be made more active again. - Tobias
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
On 04/04/2010 04:48 AM, Joshua Saddler wrote: On Sat, 03 Apr 2010 11:16:32 +0200 Tobias Scherbaum dertobi...@gentoo.org wrote: - Our formerly outstanding documentation still is somewhat maintained, but that's it. I haven't seen any new additions (both to our docs, but also to our docs-team) for years. People are constantly asking for a documentation wiki, but ... Thanks for sh**ting on my efforts. There are lots of visible changes, and I make a point of getting the word out when a new guide turns up in /doc/. I blog about the new docs I add, and I spend awhile working with contributors to make sure we get good stuff out there and that it's constantly updated -- the Openbox guide Nate Zachary wrote comes to mind. I'm also always working with developers who are writing docs in their spare time, coaching 'em through the process, assisting with GuideXML, taking patches, *and* creating patches and updates for devs who are posting documents in /proj/ and in their personal devspace. But I guess that doesn't mean anything to you. But isn't there a problem when it's my not our effort? Ideally we would have a couple people like you on board. If we stayed quiet about our perceptions then there was never the opportunity to correct them. I think the thread was done done constructively not destructively. Regards, Petteri signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
On 04/04/10 03:48, Joshua Saddler wrote: On Sat, 03 Apr 2010 11:16:32 +0200 Tobias Scherbaum dertobi...@gentoo.org wrote: - Our formerly outstanding documentation still is somewhat maintained, but that's it. I haven't seen any new additions (both to our docs, but also to our docs-team) for years. People are constantly asking for a documentation wiki, but ... Thanks for sh**ting on my efforts. There are lots of visible changes, and I make a point of getting the word out when a new guide turns up in /doc/. I blog about the new docs I add, and I spend awhile working with contributors to make sure we get good stuff out there and that it's constantly updated -- the Openbox guide Nate Zachary wrote comes to mind. I'm also always working with developers who are writing docs in their spare time, coaching 'em through the process, assisting with GuideXML, taking patches, *and* creating patches and updates for devs who are posting documents in /proj/ and in their personal devspace. But I guess that doesn't mean anything to you. Oh yes, and I spend hours each week constantly updating docs based on the inflow of bugs, forum reports, and I constantly re-read each one and improve stuff where I can on-the-fly. Not everything has a bug tracker, but the end result is still a visible difference in the stuff you see on the website. See, that's the problem. *You* are doing a good job. *We* as a team/community/ant colony aren't. The visible rate of change has slowed down, and from your reply I get the feeling that there are also fewer people working on docs than in the past. So how do we improve the situation? What needs to be done so that you could disappear for a month or two without affecting progress because there are enough other motivated people sharing the workload? My long-term goal is still to make me redundant. That way I can take a break whenever I get frustrated and I can focus on new things whenever I find something new and shiny to attract my attention...
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
On Sun, 4 Apr 2010 10:22:06 +0200 Tobias Scherbaum dertobi...@gentoo.org wrote: 5 years ago [...] constantly added [...] You need to clarify your metric. How are you defining constant? How often does a new document need to appear? What mostly happens is steady refinement and expansion of our existing docs, occasionally splitting off long portions into their own document, or merging a few back together where appropriate. Stuff that's written fully from scratch is much rarer than you think, and it's been that way for a long time. I'm not saying that's a bad thing; that's just how it is. Two noteworthy exceptions: 2005 and 2006. Those were years when we had all the English speaking GDP members writing. I came on board in 2005 and immediately helped crank out docs and updates, and worked with folks to get new stuff into the tree. 2005 was a good year both for the GDP and for external contributors to help write stuff and add patches, which is why we saw much more diversity in our new docs. Since then, the list of active English writers in the GDP has declined to one and it's been that way for a few years now, so that partly explains the slowdown in docs. Another is that we just aren't getting as many new submissions since the days when (apparently) we had more willing developers to pitch in with the docs. Many of the 2005/2006 guides have had their primary authors/contributors disappear, leaving us without an easy way to keep them up-to-date. The GDP can't maintain a doc if we don't have someone, internal or external, who can devote time to keeping docs up-to-date. Lots of those 2005/2006 additions need serious overhaul, or I'll have to mark 'em deprecated/draft or even remove them entirely. Some of the guides written years ago have been removed from the tree. Part of maintaining documents is not just writing new ones, but treecleaning, if you will, our existing collection. It's not as attention-getting as a totally new guide. I can't promise attention-getting news releases for every doc or website change I make. * * * Here, I'll take 2 hours to go through our complete CVS history for our docs in /doc/en/ and create a list of what was added or removed in the last 5 years. This list doesn't *begin* to include total rewrites or near-total rewrites (such as the printing, gnome, X11 guides) or whether the rewrites were made in just one day or over time as packages and methods have evolved. It doesn't cover the handbooks, nor the handbooks I wrote entirely from scratch in 2006 to cover the new GLI installers (and their subsequent removal after 2008's releases). It also does not include documents that have since been marked draft or deprecated or some other maintainance status besides active. I expect some of the docs on this list to still be in draft or to have moved to it or deprecated, so whether they really count is up to you to decide. If you want to average docs on a monthly or yearly basis . . . you can tweak the numbers all you want. Note, also, that just because you don't see a doc on it in the last 5 years doesn't mean we don't already have a wealth of published info on a subject in our existing documentation. Something that was added in, say, 2002 or 2004 is prolly very complete, and covers lots of stuff you'd normally find in separate articles elsewhere, for example on wikis. I'm not putting much here besides the files added/removed. This is just stuff that's initially added to or removed from CVS. *2010* Nothing totally new added nor anything completely removed. Hey, the year is young. Lots of rewrites though. *2009* Same. Mostly extensive rewrites, most notably the handbooks to take into account the autobuilds. New: bind-guide.xml New: lxde-howto.xml New: openbox.xml Removed: ldapdns-guide.xml (added 2006) Removed: gentoo-sparc-quickinstall.xml (added 2004) *2008* New: multipath.xml New: nagios-guide.xml (draft) New: openrc-migration.xml Removed: apache-developer.xml (added 2005) Removed: apache-troubleshooting.xml (added 2005) Removed: apache-upgrading.xml (added 2005) Removed: kde-config.xml (added 2004) Removed: kde-split-ebuilds (added 2005) *2007* New: gcc-optimization.xml New: pda-guide.xml (draft) New: vpnc-howto.xml New: xen-guide.xml New: xfce-config.xml Removed: colinux-howto.xml (added 2004) Removed: mysql-upgrade-slotted (added 2006, but mysql team reverted SLOTting) Removed: nx-guide.xml (added 2004) Removed: openmosix-howto.xml (added 2003) *2006* New: change-chost.xml New: conky-howto.xml New: cross-compiling-distcc.xml New: gentoo-alpha-faq.xml New: gentoo-x86+raid+lvm2-quickinstall.xml New: info-guide.xml New: jffnms.xml New: kernel-config.xml New: ldapdns-guide.xml (removed 2009) New: liveusb.xml New: man-guide.xml New: portage-utils.xml New: postgres-howto.xml New: vdr-guide.xml New: zsh.xml Removed: java-old.xml (added 2006) Removed: vserver-howto.xml (added 2005) *2005* New: apache-developer.xml (removed 2008)
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
On 2010.04.03 15:59, Tobias Scherbaum wrote: Am Samstag, den 03.04.2010, 15:40 +0100 schrieb Roy Bamford: First, we need some metrics - the first step to controlling anything is to measure it. So, how do you want to measure those metrics? I for one can't think of a useful algorithm which helps to identify understaffed or orphaned areas. Sure, one might take a look at the number of packages compared with open bugs for example - but in the end that still won't give you some useful metrics. It doesn't much matter what we measure as long as it related to what we want to control and that we do not change the metric. That way the metrics remain useful. Open bugs per package and mean age of bugs per package come to mind. Such per package metrics can be aggregated per herd, per project, the whole of Gentoo or whatever. A reducing mean age of bugs and open bugs shows we are moving in the right direction. I'm sure many other metrics are possible. If someone has a feeling somewhere helping hands are missing or an area is orphaned - that's the best metrics we can get. Feelings? The problem with feelings is that they keep changing Let me remind you of this Carl Sagan quote ... I'm often asked the question, Do you think there is extraterrestrial intelligence? I give the standard arguments -- there are a lot of places out there, and use the word *billions*, and so on. And then I say it would be astonishing to me if there weren't extraterrestrial intelligence, but of course there is as yet no compelling evidence for it. And then I'm asked, Yeah, but what do you really think? I say, I just told you what I really think. Yeah, but what's your gut feeling? But I try not to think with my gut. Really, it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in. - Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87 The important bit being it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in. - Tobias -- Praxisbuch Nagios http://www.oreilly.de/catalog/pbnagiosger/ https://www.xing.com/profile/Tobias_Scherbaum -- Regards, Roy Bamford (Neddyseagoon) a member of gentoo-ops forum-mods trustees pgpR6I1rn4awc.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 04-04-2010 04:50, Dale wrote: I felt sorry for the KDE folks when KDE4 was released. It just had to be a nightmare to get all that in the tree at once. If they had twice as many people working on it tho, it would have been easier. The people doing all that work wouldn't feel like they had to work so hard to get everything ready. Back to my hole now. Dale :-) :-) Dale, now that we've moved well past beyond that point and that we have a reasonably staffed team, let me thank you for your sympathy, agree with you about how extra hands would have helped much and admit that was a very tough time. - -- Regards, Jorge Vicetto (jmbsvicetto) - jmbsvicetto at gentoo dot org Gentoo- forums / Userrel / Devrel / KDE / Elections -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.14 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJLuS6dAAoJEC8ZTXQF1qEPHxIP/2Pm0kdi57x2OuhEBpm5ZWF5 sNyy7qbY4/b6VM/UNH5NJbg3vYBPtDtQSdY0ZB5D+C2p+q2jpko9oRR4pCFQ23QK PEPAxS+d7QwKzlLfzNOTb0uwogCEqaxEBNy7tE+KjXTsqdBuGWblqHAKXDMM9sHM Nhcqcfd87krvjPzuqOEhvk/V8kLhdzmkDZF082W827UJsVkpld10wkaOymlri/vN J2N83nzCUYxkP79zGEM7FWn12dQIW+UUqblyp5FFP38pZd7kxra/IqnJl60g1IaK pJ4tt+2InZ5HVXkW4fuOmhkjZCkd4abgtHgFuUi5Go2YloKU3sJBuJkro5me2/CZ Plp485cqK38rG7nNKLK2UrwxgKU+xO/3ylb7IhI3k3Hn7uv9mV6+MAGucwe/5T+y wHgd3ia0JqO9MD3uYa2M/u7u4sXpezZVnbHVB/RYRuaLVVVK/AMo9OQDTGbNQHPR DP5/MGG5OBqZGfLCoMmJIcgIvaKN5zRyTceXQxe0W/HXfU2zGMGTm+SBG0kM3zBH yHQjeFqA/W48CwOaCy+zwS3YaGKnuS9036VIBnhyqBpCCEMMwJ9W02abISbN2qg5 wmpbIogQT3yf6E/37x1xFeYCxdpeLwuII1hqSEBNWNz+6JBV04Zk5K7nrcsMEbo2 sKKWU1F7nb8Ha9rh58v8 =CP10 -END PGP SIGNATURE-
[gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
Hell no, but ... We have lots of quite understaffed areas, to sum up in a positive way. Summing it up the negative way one might say, we have lots of areas were users might get the idea Gentoo already is dead. For example: - hardened-sources are nowadays only available in an experimental overlay, lots of users keep asking what's happening to the hardened-sources on both the -dev but also the -hardened mailinglist. Yeah, we do have people working on hardened stuff, but if people just take what's happening in the portage tree they might think that the hardened stuff they're relying on for their business isn't supported any longer. - Our formerly outstanding documentation still is somewhat maintained, but that's it. I haven't seen any new additions (both to our docs, but also to our docs-team) for years. People are constantly asking for a documentation wiki, but ... - Infra: One might get the idea our Infra team is just Robin (yeah, sure there are more people, but ) ... things are happening slowly (no offend - I fully understand that those few can't dedicate more of their spare time to infra work!), take overlays.g.o migration, Bugzie-3 migration and so on as an example. - Understaffed herds: For example net-mail, netmon and others - were missing lots of developers and their support in lots of areas. Sadly those areas are mostly those ones, one might need packages for their business servers from. - Website redesign - we had a contest some years ago, got a winner, someone started to adapt the design and somewhat that project fall asleep. - Speaking of our website, PR ... guess there's nothing more to add. So - what to do now? To be honest - I have no real clue. But a first step might be to collect your opinions on where we do lack manpower and ideas on how to solve this problems. A Wiki might be fitting well for that task *cough*. A next step might be to discuss every identified problem and discuss our options and ideas how to improve the situation. - Tobias -- Praxisbuch Nagios http://www.oreilly.de/catalog/pbnagiosger/ https://www.xing.com/profile/Tobias_Scherbaum signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
On 4/3/10 11:16 AM, Tobias Scherbaum wrote: Hell no, but ... We have lots of quite understaffed areas, to sum up in a positive way. Summing it up the negative way one might say, we have lots of areas were users might get the idea Gentoo already is dead. For example: - hardened-sources are nowadays only available in an experimental overlay, lots of users keep asking what's happening to the hardened-sources on both the -dev but also the -hardened mailinglist. I recently sent an e-mail to gentoo-dev, http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/msg_2eb703ee97afc64a29e5d148457ac8d5.xml It seems that some work is being done, but there are people who volunteered to help, like me. What needs to be done with hardened-sources? Just a note: I'm using it on my servers, so I'm really interested in them being maintained, and I'm also able to test. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
On 04/03/2010 12:16 PM, Tobias Scherbaum wrote: - Infra: One might get the idea our Infra team is just Robin (yeah, sure there are more people, but ) ... things are happening slowly (no offend - I fully understand that those few can't dedicate more of their spare time to infra work!), take overlays.g.o migration, Bugzie-3 migration and so on as an example. My perception from the outside is also that it's sometimes hard to offer help. So if we now that we are busy then let's try to embrace others doing the work. Regards, Petteri signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
On Sat, Apr 03, 2010 at 11:16:32AM +0200, Tobias Scherbaum wrote: Hell no, but ... Then avoid feeding the distrowatch trolls w/ sensational subjects please ;) We have lots of quite understaffed areas, to sum up in a positive way. Summing it up the negative way one might say, we have lots of areas were users might get the idea Gentoo already is dead. Got any metrics offhand? The reason I ask is that I can't think of a time when 'understaffed' wasn't an applicable term. Sidenote, if we *aren't* tracking the basics, it might be worthwhile. Shouldn't be too hard to grab the history of herds.xml for example and extract the relevant data. One thing to note... crappy support for something can draw people out to contribute. Hence asking about metrics- I wouldn't be surprised if the headcount for misc. projects is a cyclic rise/fall. At the very least I'd be curious about the pre and post git metrics, once that conversion is finished up. - Infra: One might get the idea our Infra team is just Robin (yeah, sure there are more people, but ) ... things are happening slowly (no offend - I fully understand that those few can't dedicate more of their spare time to infra work!), take overlays.g.o migration, Bugzie-3 migration and so on as an example. Relaying from IRC, overlays.g.o migration bits seem to be done... - Website redesign - we had a contest some years ago, got a winner, someone started to adapt the design and somewhat that project fall asleep. A status update on this one would be useful, even if it's just got no time, here's what is remaining so someone could jump in and help where possible. Personally I'd suggest trying to extract status updates from folk- it's more useful anyways to know what's needed to get various projects done. ~harring pgp3WZkFI335U.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
On Sat, Apr 03, 2010 at 11:16:32AM +0200, Tobias Scherbaum wrote: - Infra: One might get the idea our Infra team is just Robin (yeah, sure there are more people, but ) ... things are happening slowly (no offend - I fully understand that those few can't dedicate more of their spare time to infra work!), take overlays.g.o migration, Bugzie-3 migration and so on as an example. - Presently in the infra team and active on a day-to-day basis: darkside ford_prefect halcy0n idl0r robbat2 - In the infra team and active several times/month: fox2mike kingtaco ramereth solar armin76 Problems in infra: - lack of communication and perceived transparency - We'd like to open read-only access to our Nagios soon... - lack of perceived progress - The perceived big ticket items appear to move very slowly, because they are much lower priority than day-to-day running of infra. I do have an announcement to make in the next day or 3 about some infra stuff that's going on, because it's going to affect every developer. Question for you there, you said 'overlays.g.o migration'. What migration? It moved to the new hardware more than a year ago. - Website redesign - we had a contest some years ago, got a winner, someone started to adapt the design and somewhat that project fall asleep. The guy that was doing the redesign changes vanished for a long time, he's been around again lately however. So - what to do now? To be honest - I have no real clue. But a first step might be to collect your opinions on where we do lack manpower and ideas on how to solve this problems. A Wiki might be fitting well for that task *cough*. A next step might be to discuss every identified problem and discuss our options and ideas how to improve the situation. Discussion on wiki has been going on for a while, I'll come, in a couple of months probably, but I still haven't heard anything of my call for people that were willing to do the work of editors and spam removal. -- Robin Hugh Johnson Gentoo Linux: Developer, Trustee Infrastructure Lead E-Mail : robb...@gentoo.org GnuPG FP : 11AC BA4F 4778 E3F6 E4ED F38E B27B 944E 3488 4E85
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
On Sat, Apr 03, 2010 at 09:40:12AM +, Robin H. Johnson wrote: So - what to do now? To be honest - I have no real clue. But a first step might be to collect your opinions on where we do lack manpower and ideas on how to solve this problems. A Wiki might be fitting well for that task *cough*. A next step might be to discuss every identified problem and discuss our options and ideas how to improve the situation. Discussion on wiki has been going on for a while, I'll come, in a couple of months probably, but I still haven't heard anything of my call for people that were willing to do the work of editors and spam removal. It'll come. That typo sucked. -- Robin Hugh Johnson Gentoo Linux: Developer, Trustee Infrastructure Lead E-Mail : robb...@gentoo.org GnuPG FP : 11AC BA4F 4778 E3F6 E4ED F38E B27B 944E 3488 4E85
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
Am Samstag, den 03.04.2010, 02:37 -0700 schrieb Brian Harring: On Sat, Apr 03, 2010 at 11:16:32AM +0200, Tobias Scherbaum wrote: Hell no, but ... Then avoid feeding the distrowatch trolls w/ sensational subjects please ;) oh, well ;) We have lots of quite understaffed areas, to sum up in a positive way. Summing it up the negative way one might say, we have lots of areas were users might get the idea Gentoo already is dead. Got any metrics offhand? The reason I ask is that I can't think of a time when 'understaffed' wasn't an applicable term. Metrics are a problem and i'm pretty sure you won't get any somewhat correct metrics as we have lots of herds which do have some developers listed as herd members, who are mia for quite some time. Still when considering herd members who did a commit to a package belonging to given herd in the past say 4 weeks as active you won't get useful metrics. Sidenote, if we *aren't* tracking the basics, it might be worthwhile. Shouldn't be too hard to grab the history of herds.xml for example and extract the relevant data. One thing to note... crappy support for something can draw people out to contribute. Hence asking about metrics- I wouldn't be surprised if the headcount for misc. projects is a cyclic rise/fall. At the very least I'd be curious about the pre and post git metrics, once that conversion is finished up. - Infra: One might get the idea our Infra team is just Robin (yeah, sure there are more people, but ) ... things are happening slowly (no offend - I fully understand that those few can't dedicate more of their spare time to infra work!), take overlays.g.o migration, Bugzie-3 migration and so on as an example. Relaying from IRC, overlays.g.o migration bits seem to be done... Yeah, probably i had something wrong in mind. Nevermind. Tbh, my intention wasn't to discuss the _examples_ i listed, but to hear all your opinions and ideas on where we do have problems and how to solve them. - Website redesign - we had a contest some years ago, got a winner, someone started to adapt the design and somewhat that project fall asleep. A status update on this one would be useful, even if it's just got no time, here's what is remaining so someone could jump in and help where possible. Personally I'd suggest trying to extract status updates from folk- it's more useful anyways to know what's needed to get various projects done. Yeah, status updates++ ... at least active projects/herds (like what Robin said about Infra) would be considered more active then :) - Tobias -- Praxisbuch Nagios http://www.oreilly.de/catalog/pbnagiosger/ https://www.xing.com/profile/Tobias_Scherbaum signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
Am Samstag, den 03.04.2010, 11:26 +0200 schrieb Paweł Hajdan, Jr.: For example: - hardened-sources are nowadays only available in an experimental overlay, lots of users keep asking what's happening to the hardened-sources on both the -dev but also the -hardened mailinglist. I recently sent an e-mail to gentoo-dev, http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/msg_2eb703ee97afc64a29e5d148457ac8d5.xml Yeah, seen that. It seems that some work is being done, but there are people who volunteered to help, like me. What needs to be done with hardened-sources? Just a note: I'm using it on my servers, so I'm really interested in them being maintained, and I'm also able to test. See - what we've been doing with people like you who are willing to contribute was something like Hey, nice to see you. Get in touch with the correct people, please - and i'm pretty sure there are many options on how to improve our handling of people like you, who are willing to contribute some amount of time to the Gentoo Project. - Tobias -- Praxisbuch Nagios http://www.oreilly.de/catalog/pbnagiosger/ https://www.xing.com/profile/Tobias_Scherbaum signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
hardened-sources development (was: Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?)
Am 03.04.2010 11:26, schrieb Paweł Hajdan, Jr.: On 4/3/10 11:16 AM, Tobias Scherbaum wrote: Hell no, but ... We have lots of quite understaffed areas, to sum up in a positive way. Summing it up the negative way one might say, we have lots of areas were users might get the idea Gentoo already is dead. For example: - hardened-sources are nowadays only available in an experimental overlay, lots of users keep asking what's happening to the hardened-sources on both the -dev but also the -hardened mailinglist. I recently sent an e-mail to gentoo-dev, http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/msg_2eb703ee97afc64a29e5d148457ac8d5.xml It seems that some work is being done, but there are people who volunteered to help, like me. What needs to be done with hardened-sources? Just a note: I'm using it on my servers, so I'm really interested in them being maintained, and I'm also able to test. Most development of hardened-sources was done in hardened-development overlay. There are currently recent versions of hardened-sources, but they have some regressions, which should be fixed, before they are added to the main tree. If you want to help out with this package, i suggest you join #gentoo-hardened on freenode, since that is the place, where most of the conversation is done. Additionally it might have been better to send this mail at least in CC to gentoo-hardened ML, since most interested and active people are only subscribed there. -- Thomas Sachau Gentoo Linux Developer signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
On 2010.04.03 10:16, Tobias Scherbaum wrote: Hell no, but ... We have lots of quite understaffed areas, to sum up in a positive way. Summing it up the negative way one might say, we have lots of areas were users might get the idea Gentoo already is dead. For example: [snip lots of anecdotal evidence] - Tobias -- Praxisbuch Nagios http://www.oreilly.de/catalog/pbnagiosger/ https://www.xing.com/profile/Tobias_Scherbaum First, we need some metrics - the first step to controlling anything is to measure it. Once we have some metrics, we can prioritise. With priorities, we can identify gaps in our resource pool (not just people) and attempt to fill them with recruiting. Maybe thats a bugday topic ? An open day for users who would like to become contributors and contributors who would like to become devs. -- Regards, Roy Bamford (Neddyseagoon) a member of gentoo-ops forum-mods trustees pgpDuruiRdPW9.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
Am Samstag, den 03.04.2010, 15:40 +0100 schrieb Roy Bamford: First, we need some metrics - the first step to controlling anything is to measure it. So, how do you want to measure those metrics? I for one can't think of a useful algorithm which helps to identify understaffed or orphaned areas. Sure, one might take a look at the number of packages compared with open bugs for example - but in the end that still won't give you some useful metrics. If someone has a feeling somewhere helping hands are missing or an area is orphaned - that's the best metrics we can get. - Tobias -- Praxisbuch Nagios http://www.oreilly.de/catalog/pbnagiosger/ https://www.xing.com/profile/Tobias_Scherbaum signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 7:59 AM, Tobias Scherbaum dertobi...@gentoo.org wrote:
Am Samstag, den 03.04.2010, 15:40 +0100 schrieb Roy Bamford:
First, we need some metrics - the first step to controlling anything is
to measure it.
So, how do you want to measure those metrics? I for one can't think of a
useful algorithm which helps to identify understaffed or orphaned areas.
Sure, one might take a look at the number of packages compared with open
bugs for example - but in the end that still won't give you some useful
metrics.
When I was a treecleaner I tended to look at a few things; note that
because we enforce very little in the tree these are basically just a
set of heuristics.
- metadata.xml: how many packages are maintainer-{needed,wanted}.
Does not apply to all herds because some herds fix anything in their
herd.
- date of last commit: Gentoo is fast moving and packages that
haven't had commits since 200{4,5,6} are probably old, unmaintained
and may not even compile or run.
- date of last listed maintainer commit versus last commit:
Basically if the maintainer hasn't touched the ebuild in a while but
someone else (herd members?) have, the metadata.xml is probably out of
date.
The above are all pretty easy to do with the data in the tree. Some
other useful ideas might be:
- compare open bugs for the package, when was the last bug for a
package closed (bugs data kinda sucks for this)
- for a given package in a herd, check the version in the tree
against freshmeat or similar to see how far behind it is (I think
someone wrote something for this already, exherbo?)
- check imlate to see if keywording is behind (is the maintainer
filing stablereqs?)
Metrics do not have to be perfect (they never are...) but they may
shine some light on some areas of the tree that need staff.
-A
If someone has a feeling somewhere helping hands are missing or an area
is orphaned - that's the best metrics we can get.
- Tobias
--
Praxisbuch Nagios
http://www.oreilly.de/catalog/pbnagiosger/
https://www.xing.com/profile/Tobias_Scherbaum
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
Alec Warner wrote: The above are all pretty easy to do with the data in the tree. Some other useful ideas might be: - compare open bugs for the package, when was the last bug for a package closed (bugs data kinda sucks for this) An additional search: last touched by assignee between never and now-30 days. I also just discovered that awesome query interface our bugzilla has. Can we publish a data set query where new bugs are plotted against closed bugs (maybe add already open bugs) for each herd? I'll try to come up with a query if no one else is faster with this. If the difference between new and closed bugs in a 30 days time period is over a given threshold (say 15% of the current open bugs), this might be a herd that needs help. Maybe we can come up with more insightful bugzie searches. And maybe something like that exists already and i've failed finding it. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 05:38, Petteri Räty betelge...@gentoo.org wrote: My perception from the outside is also that it's sometimes hard to offer help. So if we now that we are busy then let's try to embrace others doing the work. This is also what I have observed. I think Gentoo needs appear to be much more focused on how to let people contribute, rather than how to filter/monitor contributions. There's too much discussion about how something is bad and why it shouldn't happen in the documentation and mailing list, and too little about what can be done to make sure the contribution, idea, or user(s) get included. One specific example I can give is the developer status itself. Gentoo developers are responsible for everything, including maintenance. This is not a bad thing, if it's part of a greater developer ecosystem. All successful projects I've observed survive on half of the work, at least, being done by volunteers, and the developers are there to simply review the work before it is applied. As far as I can tell, creating an inviting atmosphere, in which the developers listen and react to the community, is essential to the continued survival of Gentoo. Yea, this one of those long-term things that sounds awesome in theory but is hard to do right. However, I think the sooner ideas like these are discussed and possibly implemented, the sooner we don't have threads like these in the mailing list. I am encouraged that Gentoo developers are considering how to regroup themselves. -- Jacob For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now — and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. Are you ready?
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
On 04/03/10 18:03, Alec Warner wrote:
- date of last commit: Gentoo is fast moving and packages that
haven't had commits since 200{4,5,6} are probably old, unmaintained
and may not even compile or run.
- date of last listed maintainer commit versus last commit:
Basically if the maintainer hasn't touched the ebuild in a while but
someone else (herd members?) have, the metadata.xml is probably out of
date.
Have the result of that analysis collected somewhere?
The above are all pretty easy to do with the data in the tree. Some
other useful ideas might be:
- compare open bugs for the package, when was the last bug for a
package closed (bugs data kinda sucks for this)
Right, but we can get that working. I have a regex to get package
names from bug titles around that works well. All we need to do is fix
all bug titles ever to contain package names: Could take a whole bugday
or two :-)
- for a given package in a herd, check the version in the tree
against freshmeat or similar to see how far behind it is (I think
someone wrote something for this already, exherbo?)
That's a larger project. GSOC ideas should contain such thing.
- check imlate to see if keywording is behind (is the maintainer
filing stablereqs?)
While you mention that: it's the first time I hear a maintainer should
do that. if so can you raise awareness of it and explain the what and
why in another thread on gentoo-dev?
Sebastian
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
On Sat, 03 Apr 2010 11:16:32 +0200 Tobias Scherbaum dertobi...@gentoo.org wrote: - Our formerly outstanding documentation still is somewhat maintained, but that's it. I haven't seen any new additions (both to our docs, but also to our docs-team) for years. People are constantly asking for a documentation wiki, but ... Thanks for sh**ting on my efforts. There are lots of visible changes, and I make a point of getting the word out when a new guide turns up in /doc/. I blog about the new docs I add, and I spend awhile working with contributors to make sure we get good stuff out there and that it's constantly updated -- the Openbox guide Nate Zachary wrote comes to mind. I'm also always working with developers who are writing docs in their spare time, coaching 'em through the process, assisting with GuideXML, taking patches, *and* creating patches and updates for devs who are posting documents in /proj/ and in their personal devspace. But I guess that doesn't mean anything to you. Oh yes, and I spend hours each week constantly updating docs based on the inflow of bugs, forum reports, and I constantly re-read each one and improve stuff where I can on-the-fly. Not everything has a bug tracker, but the end result is still a visible difference in the stuff you see on the website. - Website redesign - we had a contest some years ago, got a winner, someone started to adapt the design and somewhat that project fall asleep. We've added quite a bit, with the automated feeds and whatnot. And the sidebar stuff. And the revamping of our releases page, and lots of other areas. I've added lots of stuff; I guess you just haven't noticed. - Speaking of our website, PR ... guess there's nothing more to add. Thanks for sh**ting on my efforts here, too. Take SCALE last month. I guess all the work I did to organize SCALE and go out and make a difference with our (potential) users by talking with them doesn't mean anything. All the word-of-mouth I've done with folks before and after SCALE, even my coworkers must not count for much. * * * I would have expected such this kind of negative, abrasive email from a user, but to see such a sensationalist letter coming from a developer is disappointing, to say the least. I expect better from you. Because whether you realize it or not, your email can only come across as denigrating my efforts, and everyone else who puts in hard work on (actually visible!) changes. Your email was inflammatory and offensive, but not in the way that motivates me to do more or do anything different. It came across as extremely demotivational. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 6:48 PM, Joshua Saddler nightmo...@gentoo.org wrote: On Sat, 03 Apr 2010 11:16:32 +0200 Tobias Scherbaum dertobi...@gentoo.org wrote: - Our formerly outstanding documentation still is somewhat maintained, but that's it. I haven't seen any new additions (both to our docs, but also to our docs-team) for years. People are constantly asking for a documentation wiki, but ... Thanks for sh**ting on my efforts. There are lots of visible changes, and I make a point of getting the word out when a new guide turns up in /doc/. I blog about the new docs I add, and I spend awhile working with contributors to make sure we get good stuff out there and that it's constantly updated -- the Openbox guide Nate Zachary wrote comes to mind. I'm also always working with developers who are writing docs in their spare time, coaching 'em through the process, assisting with GuideXML, taking patches, *and* creating patches and updates for devs who are posting documents in /proj/ and in their personal devspace. But I guess that doesn't mean anything to you. Oh yes, and I spend hours each week constantly updating docs based on the inflow of bugs, forum reports, and I constantly re-read each one and improve stuff where I can on-the-fly. Not everything has a bug tracker, but the end result is still a visible difference in the stuff you see on the website. You need to take comments less personally. If there is a constant stream of updates then point him at your cia comment log or similar; no need to pick a fight about it. Certainly when compared to our documentation of old I think the rate of new documents and document updates is likely less now than it was then. Perhaps what Tobias is trying to convey is that he wants more people to contribute and write documents. - Website redesign - we had a contest some years ago, got a winner, someone started to adapt the design and somewhat that project fall asleep. We've added quite a bit, with the automated feeds and whatnot. And the sidebar stuff. And the revamping of our releases page, and lots of other areas. I've added lots of stuff; I guess you just haven't noticed. Lots of content sure; not so much on the design side. I personally like our website and I think the design is fine (no need to put too much effort into it IMHO.) but if other folks want to spend time on it I'm not going to say no. I still think something like taking what we have and doing the redesign on non-gentoo stuff and then being like 'yo dawg I heard you like websites so i put a website in your website so you can browse while you browse' or similar is the way to iterate. - Speaking of our website, PR ... guess there's nothing more to add. Thanks for sh**ting on my efforts here, too. Take SCALE last month. I guess all the work I did to organize SCALE and go out and make a difference with our (potential) users by talking with them doesn't mean anything. All the word-of-mouth I've done with folks before and after SCALE, even my coworkers must not count for much. * * * I would have expected such this kind of negative, abrasive email from a user, but to see such a sensationalist letter coming from a developer is disappointing, to say the least. I expect better from you. Because whether you realize it or not, your email can only come across as denigrating my efforts, and everyone else who puts in hard work on (actually visible!) changes. Your email was inflammatory and offensive, but not in the way that motivates me to do more or do anything different. It came across as extremely demotivational. Well it certainly hi-lights one area; that we often fail at communicating what we are doing. The pr team has some great people on it who do great stuff (not including me; I tend to do as little as possible.) Maybe Tobias is blissfully unaware of the efforts of the team. Maybe he thinks the team can do better. I don't see him saying 'well the pr team sucks balls!' I see him saying 'well the pr team is very quiet.' I don't think that is too far from the truth; although certainly pr@ is active it doesn't look like it from anyone not on that alias (SCALE aside.) -A
Re: [gentoo-dev] Is Gentoo dying?
Alec Warner wrote: On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 6:48 PM, Joshua Saddlernightmo...@gentoo.org wrote: On Sat, 03 Apr 2010 11:16:32 +0200 Tobias Scherbaumdertobi...@gentoo.org wrote: - Our formerly outstanding documentation still is somewhat maintained, but that's it. I haven't seen any new additions (both to our docs, but also to our docs-team) for years. People are constantly asking for a documentation wiki, but ... Thanks for sh**ting on my efforts. There are lots of visible changes, and I make a point of getting the word out when a new guide turns up in /doc/. I blog about the new docs I add, and I spend awhile working with contributors to make sure we get good stuff out there and that it's constantly updated -- the Openbox guide Nate Zachary wrote comes to mind. I'm also always working with developers who are writing docs in their spare time, coaching 'em through the process, assisting with GuideXML, taking patches, *and* creating patches and updates for devs who are posting documents in /proj/ and in their personal devspace. But I guess that doesn't mean anything to you. Oh yes, and I spend hours each week constantly updating docs based on the inflow of bugs, forum reports, and I constantly re-read each one and improve stuff where I can on-the-fly. Not everything has a bug tracker, but the end result is still a visible difference in the stuff you see on the website. You need to take comments less personally. If there is a constant stream of updates then point him at your cia comment log or similar; no need to pick a fight about it. Certainly when compared to our documentation of old I think the rate of new documents and document updates is likely less now than it was then. Perhaps what Tobias is trying to convey is that he wants more people to contribute and write documents. - Website redesign - we had a contest some years ago, got a winner, someone started to adapt the design and somewhat that project fall asleep. We've added quite a bit, with the automated feeds and whatnot. And the sidebar stuff. And the revamping of our releases page, and lots of other areas. I've added lots of stuff; I guess you just haven't noticed. Lots of content sure; not so much on the design side. I personally like our website and I think the design is fine (no need to put too much effort into it IMHO.) but if other folks want to spend time on it I'm not going to say no. I still think something like taking what we have and doing the redesign on non-gentoo stuff and then being like 'yo dawg I heard you like websites so i put a website in your website so you can browse while you browse' or similar is the way to iterate. - Speaking of our website, PR ... guess there's nothing more to add. Thanks for sh**ting on my efforts here, too. Take SCALE last month. I guess all the work I did to organize SCALE and go out and make a difference with our (potential) users by talking with them doesn't mean anything. All the word-of-mouth I've done with folks before and after SCALE, even my coworkers must not count for much. * * * I would have expected such this kind of negative, abrasive email from a user, but to see such a sensationalist letter coming from a developer is disappointing, to say the least. I expect better from you. Because whether you realize it or not, your email can only come across as denigrating my efforts, and everyone else who puts in hard work on (actually visible!) changes. Your email was inflammatory and offensive, but not in the way that motivates me to do more or do anything different. It came across as extremely demotivational. Well it certainly hi-lights one area; that we often fail at communicating what we are doing. The pr team has some great people on it who do great stuff (not including me; I tend to do as little as possible.) Maybe Tobias is blissfully unaware of the efforts of the team. Maybe he thinks the team can do better. I don't see him saying 'well the pr team sucks balls!' I see him saying 'well the pr team is very quiet.' I don't think that is too far from the truth; although certainly pr@ is active it doesn't look like it from anyone not on that alias (SCALE aside.) -A As a user, I see both sides of this. I rarely go to the actual Gentoo site and mostly read the home page when I do. I may go to a link once in a while that is posted on the mailing list but that is about it. I think what I see from the OP is that he feels there needs to be more people involved in several areas. I don't know you Joshua but if you are doing a lot of the docs by yourself or with just a few helpers, I think you need more help. The pages I do see are really good and I read other people using other distros commend Gentoo on its documentation. It just that maybe you need more help so that even more things can be done. Look at it this way, what would happen if you had twice the help
