[gentoo-dev] retiring
Hi all, I've been here for a couple years now, and I've lost interest to the point that I'm not doing a very good job of keeping my own system up to date, much less maintaining ebuilds. That isn't fair to anyone at all. It's time for me to move on. Gentoo is a great distro. I've met plenty of awesome, smart people around here, and I've learned a lot from my Gentoo experience. Thanks, and so long. Best wishes to the Gentoo community for 2015 and beyond. -- Chris
[gentoo-dev] Retiring
Hi guys, Since I have not been active for a long time and I have no motivation at the moment to spend more time on Gentoo, I'll be retiring as a Gentoo dev. This is just for personal reasons; it's not because of Gentoo. There are only a few packages I was maintaining, so if anyone would like to take over maintenance feel free to change the metadata. The packages are: dev-util/valgrind net-im/pyaim-t net-im/pyicq-t net-im/pymsn-t net-mail/tpop3d net-proxy/http-replicator Regards, Maurice. -- Maurice van der Pot Gentoo Linux Developer griffo...@gentoo.orghttp://www.gentoo.org Gnome Planner Developer griffo...@kfk4ever.com http://live.gnome.org/Planner pgpOH5MprETOa.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Training points for users interested in helping out with ebuild development (was: Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring)
Olivier Huber oli.hu...@gmail.com said: Hi, 2009/5/4 Thomas Sachau to...@gentoo.org [snip] For those, who can work with IRC and are interested in working with ebuilds, there is already an option: Join #gentoo-dev-help or even better #gentoo-sunrise and read the documentation from the topic. The Sunrise Overlay (with the #gentoo-sunrise IRC channel) is open for everyone willing to learn and contribute to it. Even normal users can get access, learn how to create ebuilds, how to improve them and how to maintain them. As a starting point, this is a central overlay, where ebuilds are maintained, that dont get a developer as maintainer because of missing manpower. Additionally, all contributors learn the ebuild development work themselves. I think these are really good advise but I think we could improve the way users can help concerning maintainer-needed packages. dirtyepic made a funny entry on his blog [1] and darkside tried also to do something [2], but it seems to me that this alias is a black hole. For instance, the last bugday I tried to close some bugs. Some one them were assigned to maintainer-needed@, so I said on #gentoo-bugs that I've updated those bugs. Sometimes, a dev was watching and the issue was closed, but for others I have still no comments (Ok. I'm too impatient, but I'm not really confident. But some devs can still surprise me ;-) ) I fully understand that looking at this type of bug is hard and boring. On the other hand, I know some devs who are willing to help and check patches. Since I don't think it would be a good practise to savagely CC' them, I propose to add a bug-with-patch alias or something like that. many devs go through maintainer-needed bugs from time to time. i think the easy ones will get comitted fairly fast. instead of a bug-with-patch alias, i think a _easyfix_ alias could be more helpful. it could also be used by package maintainers, which dont have the time to do the _easyfix_ (rename version bump etc.) sometimes the issue appears really simple, but it reallly isnt. in that case it would be nice, if it were deduceable from the bug, why no progress is being made. also, i feel voting for bugs is completely underutilized. votes make it apparent to the developers which bugs bug a lot of people. the incentive to fix those first is there... regards Thilo Cheers, signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: Training points for users interested in helping out with ebuild development (was: Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring)
Le mardi 05 mai 2009 à 01:59 +0200, Olivier Huber a écrit : Hi, [...] , I propose to add a bug-with-patch alias or something like that. Cheers, You mean something like the Inclusion keyword in bugzilla ? Or maybe a separate keyword that would indicate unreviewed patches. It's sad we don't have the ability to set per attachment status other than obsolete in our bugzie but we can still figure ways to work without it. -- Gilles Dartiguelongue e...@gentoo.org Gentoo
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On Wed, 2009-05-06 at 01:45 +0300, Markos Chandras wrote: On Tuesday 05 May 2009 23:45:14 AllenJB wrote: [..snip..] I am sure there are some developers which can offer a great amount of time to help/revibe slacking or dead projects ( e.g. userrel, newsletters etc ). The thing is that leadership on several projects is inactive hence users or devs who are willing to help are getting demotivated. It would be really nice each individual project to perform a clean up like: 1) have an internal discussion about its goals and future 2) Remove dead members and elect a new leader if necessary 3) Update the page 4) Publish its status 5) Assist for help is necessary Looking 'active' is very important to attract new people to project. Is this so hard? This is a really good idea, and I think that such an operation should be performed (and perhaps even enforced as a yearly or twice-yearly thing). The only issue I have with the idea is that projects with dead members and slacking leaders are unlikely to perform such a task, so you'll never get any updates from them, so devs will be demotivated to work on $project, and thus we enter the vicious cycle again... welp
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 2009.05.06 19:32, Peter Faraday Weller wrote: On Wed, 2009-05-06 at 01:45 +0300, Markos Chandras wrote: On Tuesday 05 May 2009 23:45:14 AllenJB wrote: [..snip..] I am sure there are some developers which can offer a great amount of time to help/revibe slacking or dead projects ( e.g. userrel, newsletters etc ). The thing is that leadership on several projects is inactive hence users or devs who are willing to help are getting demotivated. It would be really nice each individual project to perform a clean up like: [snip] Looking 'active' is very important to attract new people to project. Is this so hard? [snip] The only issue I have with the idea is that projects with dead members and slacking leaders are unlikely to perform such a task, so you'll never get any updates from them, so devs will be demotivated to work on $project, and thus we enter the vicious cycle again... welp Welp, Not so. These projects would be delegated upwards to the council and either scrapped offically, or some recruitment process started to breath new life into them. Maybe dead projects are cleaned like treecleaners ? - -- Regards, Roy Bamford (NeddySeagoon) a member of gentoo-ops forum-mods treecleaners trustees -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.11 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkoB2bkACgkQTE4/y7nJvau9rgCdEnTDAizW16ACkZYm/Ei0i3gF XhQAoNED5Cgsr+YwxQ3EK34acLCTu1oF =wOxS -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On Wed, 2009-05-06 at 19:40 +0100, Roy Bamford wrote: [..snip..] [snip] The only issue I have with the idea is that projects with dead members and slacking leaders are unlikely to perform such a task, so you'll never get any updates from them, so devs will be demotivated to work on $project, and thus we enter the vicious cycle again... welp Welp, Not so. These projects would be delegated upwards to the council and either scrapped offically, or some recruitment process started to breath new life into them. Maybe dead projects are cleaned like treecleaners ? This actually sounds like a pretty good idea, and one that I might actually be interested in. Someone working within such a project would have to be in close communication with most/all of the team leads within Gentoo. I feel that this would be a better solution than asking for (semi-)regular updates from the teams - having someone to have a chat with the team lead is much less formal and more relaxed way of ensuring that things are well. If it seems that the project is having problems staying alive, a call for help could be put out. If there is no improvement, the project could be referred to the Gentoo Council to see if it should be removed/abolished, otherwise... Opinions/ideas welpcome! welp
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
Markos Chandras wrote: Even a volunteer-driven organization needs some standard rules in order to survive. From time to time this volunteer moto is what some people consider as anarchy As far as survival goes - I think the rumors of Gentoo's death are greatly exaggerated. I certainly agree that we need standards, but as far as I can tell those exist. I'm not exactly sure what the actual problem is. What resolvable issue is directly impacting the Gentoo community, and how would things actually be better if that issue didn't exist? What is the itch that needs scratching? I don't see developers putting QA violations into the portage tree left and right. For the most part I'd say the level of abuse in bugzilla is down and continues to trend down. Sure, manpower is limited, but the solution to that isn't to tell the people who are here to work harder or quit (which means quit) but instead to recruit more help. Arch teams seem to be generally doing a good job keeping up with STABLEREQs on the major archs - if you use a minor arch that isn't as well supported I'm sure we'd be happy to have more help. Is the issue anarchy, or the bazaar model in general? You can't always have it both ways...
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On Tuesday 05 May 2009 16:50:47 Richard Freeman wrote: Markos Chandras wrote: Even a volunteer-driven organization needs some standard rules in order to survive. From time to time this volunteer moto is what some people consider as anarchy As far as survival goes - I think the rumors of Gentoo's death are greatly exaggerated. I certainly agree that we need standards, but as far as I can tell those exist. I don't see developers putting QA violations into the portage tree left and right. For the most part I'd say the level of abuse in bugzilla is down and continues to trend down. Sure, manpower is limited, but the solution to that isn't to tell the people who are here to work harder or quit (which means quit) but instead to recruit more help. When,how,and who is going to write down a list of possible recruitment hunting actions? There is too much chit-chatting around but nobody ( including me of course) is daring to propose actual solutions and proposals Arch teams seem to be generally doing a good job keeping up with STABLEREQs on the major archs - if you use a minor arch that isn't as well supported I'm sure we'd be happy to have more help. Arch teams, according to their project pages, are in a good shape. Major arches have enough people ( assuming that the project pages are up2date ) -- Markos Chandras (hwoarang) Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sunrise/Sound] Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
Hi! On Tue, 05 May 2009, Markos Chandras wrote: Arch teams, according to their project pages, are in a good shape. Major arches have enough people ( assuming that the project pages are up2date ) If I keel over and armin76 is stuck in work/'versity, the alpha dev count is 0. Not exactly good, but we manage. I'm in the process of recruiting an archtester and he may become a dev one day. That said, more feedback from /users/ regarding alpha would be appreciated, but I doubt -dev@ is the best place to look for it ;) Regards, Tobias (aka Blackb|rd on IRC) -- panic(smp_callin() a\n); linux-2.6.6/arch/parisc/kernel/smp.c
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 05:06:43PM +0300, Markos Chandras wrote: On Tuesday 05 May 2009 16:50:47 Richard Freeman wrote: Arch teams seem to be generally doing a good job keeping up with STABLEREQs on the major archs - if you use a minor arch that isn't as well supported I'm sure we'd be happy to have more help. Arch teams, according to their project pages, are in a good shape. Major arches have enough people ( assuming that the project pages are up2date ) The amd64 project page at least is definitely not. We have a ton of slackers. I'd venture to say most in the project don't actively work on amd64 at all. We are handling the load fairly well though. Thomas -- - Thomas Anderson Gentoo Developer / Areas of responsibility: AMD64, Secretary to the Gentoo Council - pgp7QZdeBowcq.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
Could be a good idea publish a status of each Gentoo project and see what is needed, so the users/devs can offer some help. -- Sergio D. Rodríguez Inclan - http://srinclan.wordpress.com Linux User #446728 -- http://counter.li.org/ --
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On Tuesday 05 May 2009 19:26:23 Sergio D. Rodríguez Inclan wrote: Could be a good idea publish a status of each Gentoo project and see what is needed, so the users/devs can offer some help. Publish where? Blogs? mailing list? Forums? we dont have a centralized way to inform users about such issues so the publishing should be done in multiple places *planet *universe *forum *mailing list *... It is not that handy, is it? Some one could say Post it on gentoo.org homepage. I wonder if users ever visit that page to read gentoo news :\ -- Markos Chandras (hwoarang) Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sunrise/Sound] Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
Markos Chandras wrote: Some one could say Post it on gentoo.org homepage. I wonder if users ever visit that page to read gentoo news :\ I can safely say that some never do... RobbieAB
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
Markos Chandras wrote: On Tuesday 05 May 2009 19:26:00 Thomas Anderson wrote: On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 05:06:43PM +0300, Markos Chandras wrote: On Tuesday 05 May 2009 16:50:47 Richard Freeman wrote: Arch teams seem to be generally doing a good job keeping up with STABLEREQs on the major archs - if you use a minor arch that isn't as well supported I'm sure we'd be happy to have more help. Arch teams, according to their project pages, are in a good shape. Major arches have enough people ( assuming that the project pages are up2date ) The amd64 project page at least is definitely not. We have a ton of slackers. I'd venture to say most in the project don't actively work on amd64 at all. We are handling the load fairly well though. Thomas /me is listing all the reported issues Really? I was thinking about joining amd64 project but when I visited the project page , I saw like 25 people listed as developers. So I thought that Woow,there are plenty of dudes here, so there is no urgent need for new developers right now This is a major issue as well. If the project pages are way out of date, how do we expect people to understand our real needs on manpower etc. Cleaning and updating the project pages once a while is not that difficult. It takes about 15' ( and a couple of e-mails to inform the slackers ). If we really (?) want to run a recruitment campaign, our web presence but be quite active and responsible. Is all this help needed stuff that ordinary users can help out with? If so dont people go and ask for help in the forums?
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
Markos Chandras wrote: On Tuesday 05 May 2009 19:26:23 Sergio D. Rodríguez Inclan wrote: Could be a good idea publish a status of each Gentoo project and see what is needed, so the users/devs can offer some help. [snip] Some one could say Post it on gentoo.org homepage. I wonder if users ever visit that page to read gentoo news :\ There is already such a place [1] but I think not so much people knows about it. [1] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/staffing-needs/ Mounir
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On Tuesday 05 May 2009 19:52:34 George Prowse wrote: Is all this help needed stuff that ordinary users can help out with? If so dont people go and ask for help in the forums? I assume that this recruitment process does not address to every single gentoo user but to those who actually have technical knowledge and time to spare for their beloved distro :P. We have plenty of them on forums.gentoo.org ( and not only ) -- Markos Chandras (hwoarang) Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sunrise/Sound] Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On Tuesday 05 May 2009 20:03:58 Mounir Lamouri wrote: Markos Chandras wrote: On Tuesday 05 May 2009 19:26:23 Sergio D. Rodríguez Inclan wrote: Could be a good idea publish a status of each Gentoo project and see what is needed, so the users/devs can offer some help. [snip] Some one could say Post it on gentoo.org homepage. I wonder if users ever visit that page to read gentoo news :\ There is already such a place [1] but I think not so much people knows about it. [1] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/staffing-needs/ Mounir Indeed there is. But I think that neither users nor developers are really using it -- Markos Chandras (hwoarang) Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sunrise/Sound] Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
There is already such a place [1] but I think not so much people knows about it. [1] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/staffing-needs/ Mounir None of the problems mentioned here are present on that page, the information that could be useful is: how many developers are active, which are the short/long term objectives of the project, what are the actual problems/needs, news, etc. Each project could have this information on it's project page but it need to be easily accessed by the users and constantly updated, I'm sure there are people who doesn't have developer blood but can do that kind of informational work. -- Sergio D. Rodríguez Inclan - http://srinclan.wordpress.com Linux User #446728 -- http://counter.li.org/ --
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
George Prowse wrote: Peter Faraday Weller wrote: Hi Thanks, welp Sad to hear it mate. As the person who did your first install for you (i think) I think you will be missed. I am quite surprised about what you said about the state of things because i've got the distinct impression from others that Gentoo has been improving in the past 12 months. About the lack of the developers, something I proposed about 3 years ago might be applicable: has Gentoo ever thought about doing a Dev Day in much the same way as the Bug Days? Advertise a day where people can come and have a chat with developers and get coached because there is a vast amount of people and knowledge out there and I never see anything about Gentoo wanting people. If you book them, they will come. G In my opinion, such a drive wouldn't work. I've said it before in previous posts to the Gentoo -devel and -project lists, as well as my blog posts[0]: I think Gentoo needs to improve the organisation of the projects. I know it takes developer time to update project pages and do things like maintaining the developers wanted pages, but I think that Gentoo would see this returned in a higher number of competent developers. One of the biggest problems I have as someone considering becoming a developer is following what's going on and working out where I could make contributions that are both something I would enjoy doing and would be useful for current milestones (eg. autobuilds handbooks or improving / stabilizing KDE4) that are being worked on. [0] http://allenjb.me.uk/category/linux/gentoo On a related note, I thought the recent email from the Prefix project to the -devel list was excellent - it's exactly the sort of thing I would hope to find on a projects page on gentoo.org. It contains a detailed explanation of the project, its purpose, current state and aims and includes a roadmap so that (potential) contributors can easily see where they can help out in a way that will be considered useful by the development team. I would also like to see some less secrecy for things that are going on. For example, I know that the newsletter team are currently working on a new setup for the newsletter. While I somewhat understand some of the reasons that the developers involved have chosen to not give out information on this project, I question the overall value in keeping such projects secret in this manner. A project page with the current progress and a roadmap of the project on would not only keep everyone informed, but might encourage contributions (in the form of solving any specific problems the developers are having, for example, or in the case of the newsletter, preparing content to contribute). I've also spoken before on the bus factor, which I believe comes into play here. As far as I know only one or two developers are working on the project and if they were to disappear for a length of time for any reason, (virtually) all current knowledge of the project, its progress and its code / setup would be lost. This leads me on to another issue I have with Gentoo development, which I believe is related, and that is the organisation of the source code repositories. As far as I can see there appears to be no formal organisational scheme to this at all, which can make it really hard to find things. Ideally, I would like to see a scheme that generally goes something like: /project/subproject/task. So, for example, you could find all the docs under /documentation and all the newsletter content under /pr/newsletter. (On a sidenote, the SVN repos seem a little better on this than the CVS repos layout, but it's still not as clear as I think it could be) As always, I realize this would take time to change, but I (again) think there's a good chance that it would improve contributions (on the basis that potential contributors are more likely to actually contribute if they can find what they want to work on easily). AllenJB
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On Tuesday 05 May 2009 23:45:14 AllenJB wrote: George Prowse wrote: Peter Faraday Weller wrote: Hi Thanks, welp Sad to hear it mate. As the person who did your first install for you (i think) I think you will be missed. I am quite surprised about what you said about the state of things because i've got the distinct impression from others that Gentoo has been improving in the past 12 months. About the lack of the developers, something I proposed about 3 years ago might be applicable: has Gentoo ever thought about doing a Dev Day in much the same way as the Bug Days? Advertise a day where people can come and have a chat with developers and get coached because there is a vast amount of people and knowledge out there and I never see anything about Gentoo wanting people. If you book them, they will come. G In my opinion, such a drive wouldn't work. [..] As always, I realize this would take time to change, but I (again) think there's a good chance that it would improve contributions (on the basis that potential contributors are more likely to actually contribute if they can find what they want to work on easily). AllenJB I am sure there are some developers which can offer a great amount of time to help/revibe slacking or dead projects ( e.g. userrel, newsletters etc ). The thing is that leadership on several projects is inactive hence users or devs who are willing to help are getting demotivated. It would be really nice each individual project to perform a clean up like: 1) have an internal discussion about its goals and future 2) Remove dead members and elect a new leader if necessary 3) Update the page 4) Publish its status 5) Assist for help is necessary Looking 'active' is very important to attract new people to project. Is this so hard? -- Markos Chandras (hwoarang) Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sound/Sunrise] Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On Monday 04 May 2009 00:26:13 Peter Faraday Weller wrote: Hi, I've enjoyed my time with Gentoo, mostly... But these days I've just got too demotivated to work on it. I might have stayed if Ken69267 posted me some Lifesavers, but he didn't. :( On a more serious note, the problem seems to be the complete lack of management in the required places, Gentoo is fast becoming [..] I might consider coming back. Indeed Gentoo has several problems. But we should stay together and try to deal with them. I 've been around as a dev for 3 months and I think 4-5 devs retired since then because of all the 'Gentoo anarchy' etc. So please stay and help us all solve those issues. I am pretty sure that you are not the only one who's having those thoughts. -- Markos Chandras (hwoarang) Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sound/Sunrise] Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On Mon, 4 May 2009 04:34:20 -0400 Markos Chandras hwoar...@gentoo.org wrote: On Monday 04 May 2009 00:26:13 Peter Faraday Weller wrote: Hi, I've enjoyed my time with Gentoo, mostly... But these days I've just got too demotivated to work on it. I might have stayed if Ken69267 posted me some Lifesavers, but he didn't. :( On a more serious note, the problem seems to be the complete lack of management in the required places, Gentoo is fast becoming [..] I might consider coming back. Indeed Gentoo has several problems. But we should stay together and try to deal with them. I 've been around as a dev for 3 months and I think 4-5 devs retired since then because of all the 'Gentoo anarchy' etc. So please stay and help us all solve those issues. I am pretty sure that you are not the only one who's having those thoughts. I've been a developer a bit over 5 years. We know the problems and are working to fix them. -- Markos Chandras (hwoarang) Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sound/Sunrise] Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org Regards, Ferris -- Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) fmc...@gentoo.org Developer, Gentoo Linux (Sparc, Userrel, Trustees) signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On Monday 04 May 2009 14:50:56 Ferris McCormick wrote: On Mon, 4 May 2009 04:34:20 -0400 [..] I've been a developer a bit over 5 years. We know the problems and are working to fix them. I am sure that you know them. But those problems are the reasons why more and more developers are demotivated and leaving Gentoo. 'Fixing' those problems should be a N1 priority on every gentoo council meeting until they are gone. There is absolutely no point in trying to introduce new features and stuff when we are so understaffed. First we need to bring more people on Gentoo and keep the current manpower motivated. When we are done with that, we can focus on features :\ -- Markos Chandras (hwoarang) Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sunrise/Sound] Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.gr signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
Peter Faraday Weller wrote: On a more serious note, the problem seems to be the complete lack of management in the required places, Gentoo is fast becoming (or more likely, already is) an anarchic organisation, where it's becoming nigh-on impossible to keep track of things. I see a number of issues with Gentoo these days. The lack of a proper leadership body. Lack of people working together in unison. The tree needs to be sorted out: we have 16000 packages, and 200-250 developers, not all of which are ebuild developers) - We're still using CVS, we do *not* have the manpower to keep all the packages updated properly using a centralised VCS. If these issues were fixed, I don't know/care how they do get fixed, but if they were, I might consider coming back. Hi, am I the only one to see a contradiction here? You criticise a centralised VCS and anarchism/lack of unison work at the same time. Wouldn't that be even worse with a distributed VCS then? :) I think it would. Also too much use of overlays seems bad to me (yeah the Java team is very guilty here :) and the idea of splitting tree to overlays (which pops up from time to time) is just nonsense IMHO. It seems that some people think distributed VCS (git) is a silver bullet that will fix everything? Or pushing more and more EAPI's will? I'm quite sure it won't fix the lack of focus. Which I somewhat feel too, but that may be just from the fact that I currently lack time (not motivation though, that seems almost inversely proportional :) ) for Gentoo. If more people agree on the lack of focus, then we should do something about it, instead of hoping that using better tools fixes it themselves. Vlastimil
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On Monday 04 May 2009 18:54:09 Vlastimil Babka wrote: Peter Faraday Weller wrote: On a more serious note, the problem seems to be the complete lack of management in the required places, Gentoo is fast becoming (or more likely, already is) an anarchic organisation, where it's becoming nigh-on impossible to keep track of things. I see a number of issues with Gentoo these days. The lack of a proper leadership body. Lack of people working together in unison. The tree needs to be sorted out: we have 16000 packages, and 200-250 developers, not all of which are ebuild developers) - We're still using CVS, we do *not* have the manpower to keep all the packages updated properly using a centralised VCS. If these issues were fixed, I don't know/care how they do get fixed, but if they were, I might consider coming back. Hi, am I the only one to see a contradiction here? You criticise a centralised VCS and anarchism/lack of unison work at the same time. Wouldn't that be even worse with a distributed VCS then? :) I dont think so. Centralized or distributed VCS does not have to do anything about the hierarchical structure of Gentoo. I think it would. Also too much use of overlays seems bad to me Depends of course on how each team/dev uses the overlay. Some of us use the overlays as testing places which is much better than pushing ebuilds directly to tree without extensive testing :) (yeah the Java team is very guilty here :) and the idea of splitting tree to overlays (which pops up from time to time) is just nonsense IMHO. +1 It seems that some people think distributed VCS (git) is a silver bullet that will fix everything? Certainly it will help development a lot. Take a look on git overlays ( qting- edge,kde-testing etc ). The commit and bugfix rates are incredible because the VCS is amazingly fast. Using cvs, you need at least 2' for a simple commit of a single ebuild. Using git you can push 300 ebuilds at the same time. Imaging the difference... Git is an extra motivation ( at least for me :/ ) Or pushing more and more EAPI's will? No... As I said before Gentoo is quite understaffed. First we need people. Then we can concentrate on features :) If more people agree on the lack of focus, then we should do something about it, instead of hoping that using better tools fixes it themselves. Any ideas? -- Markos Chandras (hwoarang) Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sunrise/Sound] Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On Mon, 4 May 2009 19:36:04 +0300 Markos Chandras hwoar...@gentoo.org wrote: Or pushing more and more EAPI's will? No... As I said before Gentoo is quite understaffed. First we need people. Then we can concentrate on features :) As it happens, a lot of the features that go into EAPIs are designed to help with that. They make it easier to write good ebuilds (and harder to get away with certain QA abuses by accident), possible to write ebuilds that are less annoying and possible to write ebuilds that cover things that could not previously be covered. And, looking at it the other way, Gentoo has lost a lot of good people because they weren't prepared to put up with EAPI stagnation. -- Ciaran McCreesh signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On Monday, 4. May 2009 19:06:12 George Prowse wrote: Peter Faraday Weller wrote: Hi Thanks, welp Sad to hear it mate. As the person who did your first install for you (i think) I think you will be missed. I am quite surprised about what you said about the state of things because i've got the distinct impression from others that Gentoo has been improving in the past 12 months. About the lack of the developers, something I proposed about 3 years ago might be applicable: has Gentoo ever thought about doing a Dev Day in much the same way as the Bug Days? Advertise a day where people can come and have a chat with developers and get coached because there is a vast amount of people and knowledge out there and I never see anything about Gentoo wanting people. If you book them, they will come. G and I would be the first to come Mario
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On Monday, 4. May 2009 19:06:12 George Prowse wrote: Peter Faraday Weller wrote: Hi Thanks, welp Sad to hear it mate. As the person who did your first install for you (i think) I think you will be missed. I am quite surprised about what you said about the state of things because i've got the distinct impression from others that Gentoo has been improving in the past 12 months. About the lack of the developers, something I proposed about 3 years ago might be applicable: has Gentoo ever thought about doing a Dev Day in much the same way as the Bug Days? Advertise a day where people can come and have a chat with developers and get coached because there is a vast amount of people and knowledge out there and I never see anything about Gentoo wanting people. If you book them, they will come. G and I would be the first to come Mario
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
Markos Chandras wrote: I am sure that you know them. But those problems are the reasons why more and more developers are demotivated and leaving Gentoo. 'Fixing' those problems should be a N1 priority on every gentoo council meeting until they are gone. There is absolutely no point in trying to introduce new features and stuff when we are so understaffed. First we need to bring more people on Gentoo and keep the current manpower motivated. When we are done with that, we can focus on features :\ While I see where you are coming from, I can't agree with the approach of halting all forward movement until all current issues are resolved. The problem is that we're a volunteer-driven organization, so we can't simply tell people close STABLEREQ bugs first, work on fun stuff later. We can certainly encourage people to do this, but there will ALWAYS be more maintenance items and I think we'll do better to keep Gentoo exciting and dynamic and try to attract more help, and then there will be more bodies around to take care of the grind of bugs. Essentially features are what keeps a significant portion of the current manpower motivated. Now, there are lots of people around who actually like doing maintenance and caring for specific packages, and we should certainly try to find more people like this. However, those who would rather be implementing new EAPIs in Portage/Paludis/Pkgcore/whatever won't necessarily work on arch bugs just because there is a need for this. I think the best we can do is try to highlight the issues so that those who are interested are aware of them and can sign up to help. I'd also love to see the council and trustees actively looking for solutions to these problems, but it can't be the only issue on the agenda. I've never been big on the whole Gentoo is dying meme. All people and organizations are dying - we're all born dying. Death is just the natural state of the universe in the absence of life. Even if Gentoo were perfect and full of activity we would have people leaving for various reasons - the key is to have people coming in to replace and even surpass those who leave. Gentoo has a LOT to offer the linux community - and if anything I'd say the level of innovation in Gentoo (and related projects) has been trending upwards in recent months.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On Monday 04 May 2009 21:24:11 Richard Freeman wrote: Markos Chandras wrote: I am sure that you know them. But those problems are the reasons why more and more developers are demotivated and leaving Gentoo. 'Fixing' those problems should be a N1 priority on every gentoo council meeting until they are gone. There is absolutely no point in trying to introduce new features and stuff when we are so understaffed. First we need to bring more people on Gentoo and keep the current manpower motivated. When we are done with that, we can focus on features :\ While I see where you are coming from, I can't agree with the approach of halting all forward movement until all current issues are resolved. The problem is that we're a volunteer-driven organization, so we can't simply tell people close STABLEREQ bugs first, work on fun stuff later. Even a volunteer-driven organization needs some standard rules in order to survive. From time to time this volunteer moto is what some people consider as anarchy -- Markos Chandras (hwoarang) Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sound/Sunrise] Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On Monday 04 May 2009 20:06:12 George Prowse wrote: Peter Faraday Weller wrote: Hi Thanks, welp Sad to hear it mate. As the person who did your first install for you (i think) I think you will be missed. I am quite surprised about what you said about the state of things because i've got the distinct impression from others that Gentoo has been improving in the past 12 months. About the lack of the developers, something I proposed about 3 years ago might be applicable: has Gentoo ever thought about doing a Dev Day in much the same way as the Bug Days? This is actually a very interesting idea -- Markos Chandras (hwoarang) Gentoo Linux Developer [KDE/Qt/Sound/Sunrise] Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Training points for users interested in helping out with ebuild development (was: Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring)
Mario Fetka schrieb: On Monday, 4. May 2009 19:06:12 George Prowse wrote: Peter Faraday Weller wrote: Hi Thanks, welp Sad to hear it mate. As the person who did your first install for you (i think) I think you will be missed. I am quite surprised about what you said about the state of things because i've got the distinct impression from others that Gentoo has been improving in the past 12 months. About the lack of the developers, something I proposed about 3 years ago might be applicable: has Gentoo ever thought about doing a Dev Day in much the same way as the Bug Days? Advertise a day where people can come and have a chat with developers and get coached because there is a vast amount of people and knowledge out there and I never see anything about Gentoo wanting people. If you book them, they will come. G and I would be the first to come Mario For those, who can work with IRC and are interested in working with ebuilds, there is already an option: Join #gentoo-dev-help or even better #gentoo-sunrise and read the documentation from the topic. The Sunrise Overlay (with the #gentoo-sunrise IRC channel) is open for everyone willing to learn and contribute to it. Even normal users can get access, learn how to create ebuilds, how to improve them and how to maintain them. As a starting point, this is a central overlay, where ebuilds are maintained, that dont get a developer as maintainer because of missing manpower. Additionally, all contributors learn the ebuild development work themselves. And if you are willing to learn and do continuously good work, there is a good chance that you may level up to a developer yourself someday. You want an example? This was my way to become a full Gentoo developer. ;-) So at least for ebuild maintainence, there are good starting points (probably other projects also have training grounds like the java or kde herds), the bigger problem may be the communication between potential new developers and the current developer base and our options to become a new developer. -- Thomas Sachau Gentoo Linux Developer signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
Am Montag, den 04.05.2009, 15:35 +0300 schrieb Markos Chandras: On Monday 04 May 2009 14:50:56 Ferris McCormick wrote: On Mon, 4 May 2009 04:34:20 -0400 [..] I've been a developer a bit over 5 years. We know the problems and are working to fix them. I am sure that you know them. But those problems are the reasons why more and more developers are demotivated and leaving Gentoo. 'Fixing' those problems should be a N1 priority on every gentoo council meeting until they are gone. There is absolutely no point in trying to introduce new features and stuff when we are so understaffed. First we need to bring more people on Gentoo and keep the current manpower motivated. When we are done with that, we can focus on features :\ The point of most features is to make maintenance easier and reduce breakages at user-side which hopefully reduces the amount of bugs reported because of such breakages and keep our users happy and happy users are more likely to contribute or become devs when they see some progress. But you're right, we have to find the balance somehow... -- Tiziano Müller Gentoo Linux Developer, Council Member Areas of responsibility: Samba, PostgreSQL, CPP, Python, sysadmin, GLEP Editor E-Mail : dev-z...@gentoo.org GnuPG FP : F327 283A E769 2E36 18D5 4DE2 1B05 6A63 AE9C 1E30 signature.asc Description: Dies ist ein digital signierter Nachrichtenteil
Re: Training points for users interested in helping out with ebuild development (was: Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring)
Hi, 2009/5/4 Thomas Sachau to...@gentoo.org [snip] For those, who can work with IRC and are interested in working with ebuilds, there is already an option: Join #gentoo-dev-help or even better #gentoo-sunrise and read the documentation from the topic. The Sunrise Overlay (with the #gentoo-sunrise IRC channel) is open for everyone willing to learn and contribute to it. Even normal users can get access, learn how to create ebuilds, how to improve them and how to maintain them. As a starting point, this is a central overlay, where ebuilds are maintained, that dont get a developer as maintainer because of missing manpower. Additionally, all contributors learn the ebuild development work themselves. I think these are really good advise but I think we could improve the way users can help concerning maintainer-needed packages. dirtyepic made a funny entry on his blog [1] and darkside tried also to do something [2], but it seems to me that this alias is a black hole. For instance, the last bugday I tried to close some bugs. Some one them were assigned to maintainer-needed@, so I said on #gentoo-bugs that I've updated those bugs. Sometimes, a dev was watching and the issue was closed, but for others I have still no comments (Ok. I'm too impatient, but I'm not really confident. But some devs can still surprise me ;-) ) I fully understand that looking at this type of bug is hard and boring. On the other hand, I know some devs who are willing to help and check patches. Since I don't think it would be a good practise to savagely CC' them, I propose to add a bug-with-patch alias or something like that. Cheers, -- Olivier Huber
Re: Training points for users interested in helping out with ebuild development (was: Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring)
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 5:29 AM, Olivier Huber oli.hu...@gmail.com wrote: [snip] dirtyepic made a funny entry on his blog [1] and darkside tried also to do something [2], but it seems to me that this alias is a black [snip] You forgot the references :) Don't postpone putting them till the end! You *will* forget them! Add them when you write the [$num]s ;) -- ~Nirbheek Chauhan
[gentoo-dev] Retiring
Hi, I've enjoyed my time with Gentoo, mostly... But these days I've just got too demotivated to work on it. I might have stayed if Ken69267 posted me some Lifesavers, but he didn't. :( On a more serious note, the problem seems to be the complete lack of management in the required places, Gentoo is fast becoming (or more likely, already is) an anarchic organisation, where it's becoming nigh-on impossible to keep track of things. I see a number of issues with Gentoo these days. The lack of a proper leadership body. Lack of people working together in unison. The tree needs to be sorted out: we have 16000 packages, and 200-250 developers, not all of which are ebuild developers) - We're still using CVS, we do *not* have the manpower to keep all the packages updated properly using a centralised VCS. If these issues were fixed, I don't know/care how they do get fixed, but if they were, I might consider coming back. If you *really* want me to stay/not retire, and attempt to help fix these issues, then I guess I can do so if enough people request that of me. But I will do so purely in a managerial position, and will do no ebuild or other such development. I'll still hang around in various channels and so on and so forth. Whatever happens, I do apparently maintain a few misc packages, most of which are low maintenance. Various herds will now need a new lead (apologies guys), so that will have to be arranged as well. You will also need to find another slacker to replace me ;) If there isn't a mass revolt against my retirement, so long, and thanks for all the fish! Otherwise... We'll see. Thanks, welp
Re: [gentoo-dev] retiring + looking maintainers for sendmail, tenshi, scapy, ftester
On Wednesday 06 February 2008, Andrea Barisani wrote: Hi folks, I'm retiring. Sorry to hear that. I was maintaining the following packages: app-admin/tenshi (note: I'm upstream as well) mail-mta/sendmail net-analyzer/scapy net-analyzer/ftester (note: I'm upstream as well) sys-apps/systrace is in need of love too, and has open bugs. But maybe we should just toss it away? Robert signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-dev] retiring + looking maintainers for sendmail, tenshi, scapy, ftester
Heya, Andrea Barisani wrote: Hi folks, I'm retiring. Sorry to see you go - i'd like to especially thank you for your ldap+ssh +lpk effort! thanks! :) I was maintaining the following packages: app-admin/tenshi (note: I'm upstream as well) I can take a look at tenshi if noone else is interested. Tobias signature.asc Description: Dies ist ein digital signierter Nachrichtenteil
[gentoo-dev] retiring + looking maintainers for sendmail, tenshi, scapy, ftester
Hi folks, I'm retiring. I was maintaining the following packages: app-admin/tenshi (note: I'm upstream as well) mail-mta/sendmail net-analyzer/scapy net-analyzer/ftester (note: I'm upstream as well) So those needs new maintainership. Cheers -- Andrea Barisani [EMAIL PROTECTED].*. Gentoo Linux Infrastructure Developer V ( ) PGP-Key 0x864C9B9E http://dev.gentoo.org/~lcars/pubkey.asc ( ) 0A76 074A 02CD E989 CE7F AC3F DA47 578E 864C 9B9E^^_^^ Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate -- gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-dev] retiring + looking maintainers for sendmail, tenshi, scapy, ftester
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Sorry to see you leave, I can maintain scapy if no one else wants to? Mike 5:) -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHqglzu7rWomwgFXoRAismAJ4+4D50v0k6VSRfEfRV4mMiBP9QHACeLHJB 1IYpKEqzWFsdiFYXG7IJyhc= =16SE -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
[gentoo-dev] Retiring
Hi all I'm finally giving in to reality and retiring as a Gentoo Dev. I've been effectively inactive since March last year and lack of time means that isn't going to change any time soon. I'll still be using Gentoo of course, so I'll still stick my nose in on bugzilla now and again :) There's not much out there that depends on me; packages that have my name against them as maintainer are: app-admin/eselect-oodict app-text/hunspell app-text/info2html sys-apps/qtparted and app-dicts/myspell-* There's useful work to be done on the myspell dictionaries (which are used by hunspell). Currently various applications install their own copies of dictionaries in various places - something that is just wasteful and lazy. I'd always intended to finish an eselect module for managing myspell dictionaries; got some work done but never finished it off. eselect-oodict was a quick version for dealing with OOo.org dictionaries (which uses myspell dictionaries) and you can find my attempts at a more generic eselect-myspell on bugzilla. Doing that needs co-operation from the relevant applications (particularly the mozilla application set). qtparted is controversial and may not be worth holding on to; see bugzilla for details. Lastly, just to say I've learned a lot from my involvement with Gentoo over the time I was active and it has been very worthwhile for me; hopefully I've managed to contribute at least something back to compensate! All the best, Kev. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Retiring
On 21:18 Mon 04 Feb , Kevin F. Quinn wrote: I'm finally giving in to reality and retiring as a Gentoo Dev. I've been effectively inactive since March last year and lack of time means that isn't going to change any time soon. I'll still be using Gentoo of course, so I'll still stick my nose in on bugzilla now and again :) Feel free to keep trying to get hardened X working perfectly. =) Thanks, Donnie -- gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
