> Generally speaking, I think we are understaffed (like all volunteer
> organisations?) and particularly in need of people working on our infra-
> structure.
i think it's more than that: given that guix is a monorepo, handing out the
commit bit is a much bigger deal than allowing someone to merge PRs for e.g. a
hypothetical python channel. a commit bit to the monorepo means that someone
can e.g. change things about how git commits are authenticated, or how .scm
files are compiled and packaged for shepherd to start services with user code
in it... i.e. completely different ballpark in responsibility and complexity
from merging e.g. a version bump or a small fix in a leaf package.
i think there are many more people willing to carry some weight on a limited
subset, with a somewhat relaxed requirements and responsibility... but
currently it's an all or nothing.
to give an example here: i have a viscereal reaction against the ChangeLog
commit messages. this is at least one reason why i don't even apply for the
commit bit, because i would find it impolite to open arguments about that after
the fact. but if there were a channel for e.g. common-lisp packages where
commit messages are more relaxed, then i would contact the person responsible
for that channel for the commit bit.
centralization always develops a bandwidth problem.
i can understand that in such a setup no one is happy about the idea of having
to audit dozens (hundreds?) of git commits every day.
unfortunately i don't really have a workable proposal for fixing this. but i
think the backlog would immediately get better if we could isolate a standalone
guix core repo and a bunch of channels for packages that are not dependencies
of that core.
but for such a split we need to solve things like guix time-machine and
inter-channel dependencies, and probably a lot of other issues i'm not even
aware of.
--
• attila lendvai
• PGP: 963F 5D5F 45C7 DFCD 0A39
--
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad
in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
— Charles Mackay
