In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Kevin Horton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
At 18:51 -0800 26/1/04, Matthias Neeracher wrote: >Could you explain in what way NOT allowing .app bundle >packages enriches fink currently? > >If native KDE runs everything that KDE/X11 does and looks good, then >I see no inherent value in KDE/X11, but as long as people are >interested in the latter, the KDE/X11 package will find maintainers.
Finding maintainers is only the first challenge. The second challenge is getting someone to look at the package after it has been submitter to the package tracker. There are already 110 packages that have been submitted and are waiting for fink developers to review. Some of them have been there since May 2003 and have yet to even get a comment from a developer.
I just had a peek over there, and there are indeed a small number of packages that don't seem to be getting acted upon at all (The oldest of them seems to be xkbsw). The vast majority, however, did get comments and are mostly awaiting revisions by the original submitters. Also, in light of the fact that around 1000 packages submission HAVE already been incorporated from the tracker, 100 open packages don't seem an unreasonable number to me..
I am working on a web page which will be an alternate index of the package submissions. This page will identify which packages are waiting for the submitter, and which ones are waiting for a fink developer. I am making steady, slow progress. I'm learning perl, php and mysql as I go, so some simple things take several days to sort out. I'll post a message once I have the prototype online for comments. This should help identify which package submissions are ready for fink developer input.
- To the extent that packages are not getting addressed, it's not really because all available committers are busy wrapping .app's, it's because they don't know enough about the packages. I can only speak for myself, but my criteria for looking at a submitted package include that I have a sufficiently good idea what it's supposed to do that I'd know after installing it whether it works correctly. Most packages currently on the tracker don't fit this criterion. This problem is compounded by some of the submissions not being very descriptive: It would be very helpful if titles included a hint what the package does, rather than just the title.
I don't understand why the fink developer needs to understand how an application works. I would expect the fink developer to ensure that the package complies with the packaging policy, and compiles cleanly. After that it is up to fink users to tell the maintainer if the package does not work properly.
Fink is an open source project. To the extent that resources are "focused", it's on packages that are interesting to somebody, not on packages that fit with our 50 year strategic vision. The great thing about fink is that it includes an enormous variety of very specialized packages. The drawback of that is that some packages are so specialized that none of the current committers can really relate to them.
I recognize that the fink developers are volunteers, and they will work on whatever interests them. But I do find it a bit frustrating that a package should not make it into fink just because there is no developer who finds it interesting enough to look at. What about having a third tree, for untested packages. This would be for packages that have been submitted, but not yet reviewed by a fink developer. Users would have to understand that there was absolutely no guarantee that a package from the untested tree wouldn't do nasty things to their fink distribution, or computer, etc. But it would at least give them access to some packages that they otherwise wouldn't get for months.
Then people like me could stop submitting minor packages> that may never get reviewed and simply post the .info files on a webpage for people to download themselves.
Under what login did you submit packages and what packages of yours have gone unreviewed for an extended amount of time?
I submit under the login rv8. I have had fplan-nox waiting since 2003-12-24. It is a flight planning tool to be used for pilots to plan flights. See:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=865388&group_id=17203&atid=414256
Kevin Horton
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