On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 10:01:52PM +1300, Michael Cree wrote: > Steve Langasek wrote:
>> Also unsurprisingly (to me, given my observations that had led to the post >> in the first place), no one else has yet stepped up to be an alpha porter >> for squeeze. > What is involved in this job? Collectively, the porters are responsible for: - keeping the arch-specific bootloader (aboot) in working order - maintaining the arch-specific installer components - maintaining the architecture's kernel build - fixing the toolchain (in collaboration with upstream) if it breaks - making sure packages are generally building sanely, and fixing architecture-related build failures (<https://buildd.debian.org/~luk/status/architecture.php?a=alpha>, <https://buildd.debian.org/stats/graph2-quarter-big.png>) - Working on architecture-specific bugs in packages (e.g., <http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/[email protected]>) > What is the time commitment? Varies widely. I think I averaged less than 3 hours a week (possibly much less) through the etch cycle and the beginning of the lenny cycle. > What is the needed experience? While folks who aren't DDs won't be turned away from helping, in practice there needs to be a certain critical mass of DDs working on a port since it's important to be able to do uploads directly when needed. Otherwise, reviewing the debian-alpha list archives over the past few years probably gives as good an indication as any of the kind of bugs that need to be dealt with. >> But in the absence of some demonstration of committment in the next >> couple of weeks, on March 7 I'll plan to ask the ftp team and the release >> team to drop alpha from the archive for testing and unstable. > Ouch! Just when the patches to provide PCI resource files under sysfs > on Alpha have materialised, and I was so looking forward to the new > xserver propagating through to unstable and testing. It's not out of the question that this might happen before March. I don't know that the removal of alpha is going to be instantaneous, either; furthermore, removing alpha from the archive doesn't preclude building an unofficial alpha version of squeeze, perhaps of a hand-picked, reduced set of packages. If people are interested, it's possible something could be worked out with debian-ports.org. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ [email protected] [email protected] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
