Hi, Marc Haber <[email protected]> (2026-07-15): > On Wed, Jul 15, 2026 at 06:14:47PM +0200, Cyril Brulebois wrote wise words. > > tl;dr: sorry for bothering you > > Over the past several hours I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about > this reply and trying to express myself more clearly. I hope this message > better reflects what I actually meant.
Thank you for writing all this, that's much appreciated. I'll go for short comments here and there because these are things I've already written a number of times. > As for the installer itself, I'd like to explain where I'm coming from. > From my perspective, the Debian Installer is a large and rather intricate > code base with a lot of moving parts, all interacting with each other one > way or the other, and understanding how everything fits together is not > always straightforward for someone approaching it > That isn't meant as criticism of the people maintaining it today; it's > simply my impression as a newcomer trying to find my way around. > > The reason this matters is that, from the outside, the installer project > looks like something that could really benefit from additional contributors. > I had genuinely been considering spending more time helping with the > installer, but at the moment I feel that I'll need a bit of guidance from > people who already know their way around the code. > > What I found surprising is that, while people do take the time to answer > questions, the overall experience still leaves me with the impression of a > well-established group where a newcomer can easily feel like an outsider. > I'm quite sure that isn't the intention, but it is the impression I came > away with. As someone trying to get involved, it's difficult to tell whether > I'm simply asking the wrong questions or whether I'm expected to figure more > out on my own first. The Installer is probably the most architecture > dependent part of Debian, and people coming new to the installer can be > confused by the huge amount of differnet boot methods that the Installer has > to cater for. I cannot speak for others, but I can assure you that most of the time I start with some random `git grep` and hit reply when I find “something” that I hope will help make some progress. There's no extended knowledge database in my head that I don't want to share with anyone just to feel important. Except for the few parts I wrote or rewrote over the years, there's just a huge codebase that I don't know much/anything (depending on the area) about, except it mostly does the work, otherwise it'd been flagged and hacked on earlier. > I imagine I'm probably not unique in that regard. Someone who is > already motivated to contribute can easily conclude that they are > getting in the way rather than being welcomed. That would be > unfortunate, because every long-term contributor was once new, and > lowering that initial barrier would probably make it easier for people > to become involved. It's the same bootstrap problem as usual: people having worked on d-i in the past might know parts of it, might have some time windows to try and answer questions as best as they can (and I can understand how those answers can be less satisfying than one might have hoped for), but that doesn't mean they have vast amount of time and/or energy to make things easier for others. I don't like to think in terms of ROI but I wouldn't have good results to report regarding past attempts on my part to share write-ups, give talks, etc. This probably talks more about the lack of any kind of leadership on my part than anything else, but the fact of the matter is: I started doing this to fill a void, because it wouldn't have been reasonable to freeze before having some kind of installer alpha release. I'm no project leader with a vision, roadmaps, and infinite amounts of energy or time. Since then, some features were developed (esp. around non-free-firmware) but most of the time, I fix stuff that breaks, and I barely find time to do that. And that needs to be done. So sorry if I'm not doing enough to make things easier for everyone else, but as (what you seem to consider) some kind of “expert”: no, I don't know much more than you, and I'm already maxed-out. > If there is a recommended path for new contributors to get up to > speed, I'd genuinely appreciate being pointed to it. I did find > documentation, lots of it, but as someone approaching the installer > for the first time I often struggled to determine which parts are > still current, which are historical, and where the authoritative > information lives. To be clear: I wouldn't know more than you here. I would have to review bits and pieces on a case by case basis. And by “review” I mean dig into code, maybe runtime tests, compare against the doc, etc. Not in the “look back at something I once knew” sense. > The documentation was clearly written by people very familiar with the > code, the processes and the toolchain, and such documentation is > usually hard to understand for a newcomer since the crucual first 15 % > are missing. In many cases I found myself having to read the source > and reconstruct how the pieces fit together. Congratulations, you have the exact same set of expertise as me (and maybe some others, but I wouldn't want to generalize). > Getting snappy answers at this point it exactly the point where a > motivated and talented newcomer might shrug and walk away. On the other side of things, people might also shrug, and stop trying to answer… > I'll probably come back to the technical topic in a few days. First I need > to step away for a bit, and then I'd like to think a bit more about whether > I can achieve my goal of better scriptable and preseedable storage setup > without having to understand quite so much of the installer's internals (and > the technical debt that is in the code) so that I don't need to bother you > again. And, to be honest, I'd also like to let things cool down a little. > I've already spent more energy on this today than I should have. I hope the above kind of gives some perspective as to what “being on the other side” (i.e. “no longer being a newcomer” sense) looks like. Again, I'm only speaking for myself, but I'm pretty sure this doesn't only apply to me… > In any case, I hope everyone has a wonderful week, and thank you for > taking the time to read this. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts. Best wishes to everyone as well! Cheers, -- Cyril Brulebois ([email protected]) <https://debamax.com/> D-I release manager -- Release team member -- Freelance Consultant
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