Am 05.07.16 um 00:18 schrieb Jookia: > On Mon, Jul 04, 2016 at 05:14:56PM +0000, ng0 wrote: >> t3sserakt writes: >> >>> Hi Ludo, >>> >>> I would like to help, but I have no idea where to start. >>> I am "just" an application developer, and do not have >>> the right knowledge for doing this task alone. >>> >>> Additionally to that I am busy with helping the >>> secushare (gnunet) project. >>> >>> But if there is somebody who knows in more detail >>> what to do, I can help. >> I think Jookia was working on this.. or still is.. I am unsure >> about the state of Jookia's work. >> I'll CC Jookia and we'll see if this thread gets an reply. >> >> Additionally I CC'ed you t3ss because I don't know if you are >> subscribed.
I am not. Thx! > Hi there! > > I started on an ARM port a few months ago with the intention of running the > system on my Novena, but eventually gave up given the hard development cycle. > I haven't talked about this before but I don't expect many people to read this > email, so here goes. The main pain points were these: > > - Patches would get lost regularly. > > This is probably the biggest issue, and from reading the mailing list it > doesn't > seem to be solved. There was an attempt at adding a patch tracker but I guess > that was lost too. I suggested at some point to use a newer version of Mailman > which would help this, but the developers didn't think it useful. The > suggested > way to fix this is to reply and get people's attention about your patches > again. > > I'm not cut out to what feels like nagging people when I don't know the > reasons > why they haven't replied. Perhaps this is how things work in other systems, > but > as someone that suffers from social anxiety and finds it hard enough to even > send patches I can't deal with this, and Guix seems to be doing fine without > me. > > - Feedback is little to none. > > As patches were lost and most discussion was done on the mail list, there was > basically no discussion on patches or design problems. After getting Guix to > boot on my Libreboot machine I went to work on fixing issues with the boot > system, such as adding support for legacy Libreboot systems and encrypted > bootloaders. This was lost. > > I also did some work to get LVM+LUKS working on Guix and tried to spark a > discussion in to fixing the design issues in system configuration. I think > there > was about one reply, and it was lost. > > Some of the work that I did do and in fact got in somewhat by proxy is GTK+ > theming. There's a habit of maintainers fixing things themselves rather than > taking patches, which I feel is a further hindrance to actually working on > Guix. > > This gives me the impression that Guix doesn't have enough maintainers to > sustain people doing new development upstream, want to do things themselves, > or > the project is just bad at communication. > > - GNUness over pragmatism. > > The main issue I had with doing an ARM port is the bootloader, and this is > because everyone I spoke to except Ludovic seemed to be hesitant towards > using a > bootloader other than GRUB. Looking at the code base, I'd need to do make > things > less GRUB-specific which I was happy to do, but I didn't want to do it wrong > or > end up with my work ignored or thrown away. > > To be concrete, the conversation generally went like this: "To get the Novena > booting Guix I'll need to add support for U-Boot as a bootloader." "I've heard > GRUB works on ARM, have you tried that?" "Yes, it doesn't work from what I've > tried." "Perhaps you've done it wrong." "I can't rule that out, but GRUB on > ARM > is still early work compared to U-Boot (which GRUB uses) and it'd work for > more > boards." then the conversation would drop off. > > I have a distinct feeling this is due to a bias in building "the GNU system" > rather than building a fully free Guix-based system. I do not really want to start a debate on principles, but isn't the goal of GNU to have a fully free system? > I was originally going to > do a fork of Guix with my own changes that people could download, but in the > end > I just went back to NixOS which runs happily on my Novena and my Libreboot > machine. The only reason I wanted to use Guix was so I could contribute > patches > upstream and not maintain ones locally like I do with NixOS. > > - Summary > > This experience has put me off of Guix, GNU and free software development. I > don't blame any one, but more a system that doesn't incorporate people like > me. > I'm not going to elaborate more on this, I just had to get it off my chest. That reads very sad. > I'm willing to send you code and help you with what I've done: It's mostly > reworking the bootloader. There's no ARM support yet, but I did identify the > points that need changing. That would be very kind. I would endeavor that your work will not be for nothing. Like Alex I also had the experience, that you need a lot of patience when participating in free software development. There are a lot of volunteer with more or less time for working on a huge amount of tasks. Maybe right now it is not the time for Guix on arm, but I hope you can be encouraged to give this community another chance in the future. t3sserakt
