On Thu, 3 Jun 2010 22:35:04 +0200 Ben de Groot <yng...@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Also, there are herds that have several members, but none of them is > really active (games, most of the desktop-* herds, etc.). This also > leads to users being discouraged because the bugs they file are left > ignored. > > This needs a structural solution. I think we need a team to > systematically look at open bugs and to notify the community of such > problematic herds. I imagine this would be a QA subproject. That would basically be a task other than bug-wranglers, but jakub used to do all this and I do it sometimes, among a few others who either just scratch an itch or take a general interest. Maybe the bug-wranglers project can be extended since it at least has some active people (not just developers), but as it now stands there are again 150 unassigned bugs after only a week (up from ~40 since the last reassignment run I believe). "Calling in" QA as such usually isn't really beneficial. > Then we also need some structure to redirect some dev love to these > problematic areas. We need to advertise these needs more, to get > trusted users to proxy-maintain. We need to streamline the recruitment > process to make it easier for people who want to volunteer to become > devs. And I could go on for a while. There are a lot of areas where > Gentoo has a lot of room for improvement, and they all interlock. All these problems seem to come down to the fact that we're understaffed in most departments. Setting up yet another project isn't going to help much. Just looking at open bugs (bugzilla can help you figure out which bugs might need someone's particular attention). What might help right now is look at the herds.xml data and combining that with activity rates of the developers in all herds. Herds with few developers and lots of open bugs is something you could calculate and filter down into a monthly or weekly report you send to a mailing list (probably dev-announce?). > I believe we need to formulate a vision of what we want Gentoo to be, > and then develop strategies of how to get there. Having a team that > systematically looks at the state of herds as well as open bugs is > --in my opinion-- a crucial first step to adress some of the > structural problems that have plagued Gentoo for years. Do you mean we should redefine what Gentoo is about, to satisfy the lack of active developers? Bring down the number of packages? Or address the staff shortage? That last one is rather old, as recruiters have been clamouring for help for years now. Regards, jer