On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 2:44 PM, ari edelkind < [email protected]> wrote:
> yaro at marupa wrote: > > It's under development. To be honest a lot of Arch users are tired of > > this discussion popping up. If you want it to show up sooner, then you > > could help by submitting patches of your own to the pacman developers. > > > > It'll get here when it gets here. > > This is a poor attitude. A better attitude would be, "Here's how you > can help: ..." > > "... Submitting patches of your own" is an invalid continuation of > that response. Patches? For what? Where's the documentation of the > way it should function? Where's the documentation of the current > infrastructure? Where's the specific information about what's left to > do? Is the information recent? > > This page: > https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Package_Signing_Proposal_for_Pacman > > ... is a "proposal". It was last edited a year ago. It does not help. > > This page: > https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/5331 > > ... is a "task" ticket, in the tracker, but it doesn't offer much in > the way of relevant information. It does not help. > > This page: > https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/User:Allan/Package_Signing > > ... was updated within the past month, at least, but is, as far as i > can tell, a brain dump for Allan himself. Information is sparse, > implementation details are almost nonexistent, and TODO items are > vague. It does not help. > > In 2010, based on information present in the above-referenced tracker > ticket, i tried contacting the Arch developers who appeared to be > involved, offering to contribute, and got no response. Allan's > Package_Signing page didn't exist yet. As far as i can tell, at this > point, that ticket is even assigned to the wrong person. You can't > make it difficult for people to contribute and then complain that you > aren't receiving contributions. > > I'm not downplaying the effort that Allan (et al.?) has put forth -- i > think it's excellent! But so far, this has all the markings of a > single-person project, being coded by someone who doesn't _want_ > contributions. > You're wrong here, it's not a single person project, i have seen Dan and others commit package signing implementations too. For example: http://projects.archlinux.org/devtools.git/commit/?id=c16e7c25c9432e0d2f0fdeea30f08ad2ffe6950b > Typically, here's what people who do want contributions supply: > - an overview of the program internals and general API > http://code.toofishes.net/pacman/doc/ > - details about how the current project _should_ function. > - API notes on what has been implemented for the current project thus far. > - DETAILS on what portions of the project remain, so that others can > pick them up. > > I can do without the overview of program internals. The latter three > are rather more important. > > So, why not adopt a better attitude -- indeed, perhaps a better method > -- and actually try to get contributors? > > In case it still isn't clear: > I'd love to help. I'd love to write patches. I'd love to submit > them. I'd love to see pacman package signing in operation, so much so > that i'm willing to devote some of my scant time to do so. Now, > somebody (Allan?), please make it reasonable for me, and others like > me, to even try. Probably the biggest obstacle is implementing the infrastructure. If i am correct devtools is already done. (not sure though) Thanks, > ari > > -- Jelle van der Waa
