Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: RFC: Project proposal -- maintainer-wanted
On K, 2009-05-20 at 00:55 +, Duncan wrote: Mart Raudsepp l...@gentoo.org posted 1242777068.30374.30.ca...@localhost, excerpted below, on Wed, 20 May 2009 02:51:08 +0300: It is about getting popular packages (based on various metrics) into the official tree for easy access and with known quality. Perhaps some concrete examples of packages you have in mind might be useful. A big part of the thing is to get things better qualified in popularity. Encouraging users on maintainer-wanted bugs (automatically adding a link to a describing page if assignee=maintainer-wanted?) to leave their votes appropriately, automated methods to sort bugs based on comment and activity, comparing with popularity metrics in other distributions that have something like the not-really-existing yet gentoo-stats, perhaps working on gentoo-stats, etc etc. I list in the footnote[1] a couple I originally merged from sunrise, that are now in-tree. I that the type of package you had in mind? What /about/ sunrise packages? Will you be working with them to bring popular packages from there in-tree too? Of course in your case the ebuilds aren't in the tree yet, but bug numbers for apps you believe fit the popular description might be useful. Popular packages is a nebulous enough term on its own, that some examples might help. These metrics should be worked out by an upcoming team then, not ignoring common sense. But perhaps a few examples then: miro songbird moovida (previously known as Elisa Media Center) paperbox shutter I see many of the ones I was able to list seem to be either complex deptree packages that no-one has been motivated enough yet to push through (so hopefully once that hard work gets done once, a dedicated maintainer is found easily), and stuff that would be cool to use once it's easily available and found, but not something people very much depend on to care that much alone for themselves, hence a team finding such packages at first could be useful. Also, an example or two of what you might consider a borderline case, that you might consider adding if the load on the proposed project wasn't too high already, but would reject if it was. Feel free to add comments or explanations on how you came to that conclusion, both for the popular and borderline examples, as well, if you think it necessary. . [1] I still use sys-apps/moreutils. The other one was www-plugins/swfdec-mozilla and its dep media-libs- swfdec, which I had some trouble with and eventually unmerged in favor of a couple of youtube downloaders, since youtube was what I mainly used swfdec for anyway. -- Mart Raudsepp Gentoo Developer Mail: l...@gentoo.org Weblog: http://planet.gentoo.org/developers/leio signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: RFC: Project proposal -- maintainer-wanted
On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 12:24 +, Duncan wrote: Daniel Pielmeier daniel.pielme...@googlemail.com posted 6142e6140905150344y4a8007b5wd352ffe891e49...@mail.gmail.com, excerpted below, on Fri, 15 May 2009 12:44:47 +0200: 2009/5/15 Marijn Schouten (hkBst) hk...@gentoo.org: Thilo Bangert wrote: Fedora is a much more current distribution than Gentoo - and has been for a couple of years... Please elaborate what exactly you think Fedora does better than we do. I have no first-hand experience with Fedora, but from what I read I had the impression that sometimes they go with new stuff before it is ready, like KDE4 and pulseaudio. I like about the current situation that we also have all those things available AFAICS, but have very broad choices in how much we want to bleed. IMO this is a different issue than having supposedly popular ebuilds not in main tree. AFAIK Fedora is [Red Hat's unstable.] So it makes more sense to compare it with the Gentoo unstable tree instead of the stable one. Assuming this there is probably not a big difference in the up-to-dateness. Well, yes and no. As the GP said, they sometimes go with new stuff before it's ready -- before Gentoo even has it in-tree hard-masked let alone ~arch, while it's still in the various project overlays. I know they've had some serious issues with xorg on Intel GPUs at least, due to running versions that aren't in our tree yet, only in the X overlay, because Fedora is running clearly not even ~arch-ready packages, sometimes even xorg prereleases. I believe you are thinking of rawhide. Fedora and quite most other distributions work fundamentally different. We have a gradually moving tree, as we can do that by being source based. Fedora and other distributions are doing releases, which involves switching to a newer repository branch with dist-upgrade and so on. They release a new version typically every 6 month, we release new major versions of packages all the time (considering the whole set). I'd say that at the point of binary distribution releases their released trees are somewhere between our ~arch and stable tree, while within a month or two, they become similar to our stable tree until our continous releases overcome it with newer versions. Fedora has xorg prereleases in what they call rawhide. This is what will become a new release in the future, as they have ~6 month cycles. It's unstable on purpose, as they are thriving towards being stable with that repository at the time of the planned next release, while having up to date packages around the time of the release (with a ~1 month stabilization period before the release time). That's the fundamental difference, and where we can have an advantage over them in addition to other things coming from being source based. Years ago we'd have put these in-tree but hard-masked for those who wanted to try them. Now, depending on the package and Gentoo but more likely as the complexity rises to meta-package levels, those who want to try them must load an overlay. As someone who selectively unmasks and tries these, having them in-tree but hard-masked is convenient, but I understand why projects may prefer overlays in many cases. We do tend to prefer overlays in many cases for unstable releases. The project proposal at hand is of course talking about packages that are not available at all in the main tree yet. Overlays are quite nice for tracking unstable releases of package sets that do have their upstream stable releases in official tree. However, none of this directly applies to the subject at hand, because while we're talking new versions of packages already in-tree here, the subject at hand is packages that aren't in-tree in any form yet. Sorry, still felt like replying with my view on Gentoo vs dist-upgraded distros :) -- Mart Raudsepp Gentoo Developer Mail: l...@gentoo.org Weblog: http://planet.gentoo.org/developers/leio signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: RFC: Project proposal -- maintainer-wanted
On Sun, 2009-05-17 at 12:08 -0600, Ryan Hill wrote: On Thu, 14 May 2009 03:32:12 +0300 Mart Raudsepp l...@gentoo.org wrote: Project maintainer-wanted = Abstract: There are currently quite some package requests (over 3000) languishing on bugzilla waiting for a developer or team to get interested and package it in the official gentoo-x86 portage tree. However in quite some cases that might not happen for quite a while even with very popular packages desired by users. The purpose of the maintainer-wanted project is to get as many of such packages to the official tree as possible as a stopgap solution. Actually, I'm working on a get the crap out of the tree project that is pretty much the exact opposite of this. ;) I don't think it opposes it much, maybe only 2-5% of maintainer-needed packages. Popular packages aren't crap. Their packaging ease might be, but obviously people want to use those if they are popular, hence we can't dub them really crap. We could say those packages are crap that get building bugs filed by tinderbox runs from Patrick, Diego and other such people, while no-one else has cared. The maintainer-wanted project would not be interested in any such packages. Those are obviously dead applications/libraries that are in no way popular and very beneficial to carry in the official tree. But, things I like: - metrics for package popularity (can we do gentoo-stats already?) Yeah, that'd be cool. Some other metrics ideas I brought out that can be used for this projects purposes while there is no gentoo-stats. - encouraging teams and maintainers to take an interest in unmaintained packages It being a project/team making it more likely it doesn't degrade over time when there is no dedicated team maintaining this. Maybe we could make it so that when a package maintained by someone specific (individual or team) that was taken over from maintainer-wanted would drop back to maintainer-wanted team instead of maintainer-needed herd, as the latter currently has technically no members. - keeping track of maintainer-wanted/needed packages through categorization, etc. - proxy-maintainers These things I think would benefit both projects, as well as several others. I would actually rather see our overall package count dropping than growing, but if we're adding quality, maintained stuff and tossing out the garbage then I guess that's an improvement too. Indeed. -- Mart Raudsepp Gentoo Developer Mail: l...@gentoo.org Weblog: http://planet.gentoo.org/developers/leio signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: RFC: Project proposal -- maintainer-wanted
On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 07:54:35AM +0200, Patrick Lauer wrote: Yes, one did. Some people just need a good excuse to leave :) You lost the best laptop developer Gentoo had ever had.. -- Alexander Færøy http://dev.exherbo.org/~ahf/ pgpscOKrRfN37.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: RFC: Project proposal -- maintainer-wanted
To potential responders to this message: Nothing to see here, please move along. Everytime you reply to this message, a kitten is deleted. 2009/5/14 Alexander Færøy a...@0x90.dk: On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 07:54:35AM +0200, Patrick Lauer wrote: Yes, one did. Some people just need a good excuse to leave :) You lost the best laptop developer Gentoo had ever had.. -- Alexander Færøy http://dev.exherbo.org/~ahf/ -- ~Nirbheek Chauhan
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: RFC: Project proposal -- maintainer-wanted
[Snip] Maybe you just want Sunrise in the main tree instead of as a dedicated, supervised overlay. There were people with VERY strong feelings against Sunrise, to the point I believe at least one dev opposing it resigned over it Yes, one did. Some people just need a good excuse to leave :) and other boosting it were disciplined. Not that I remember. Are you ready to take on that sort of opposition to get it in-tree? Maybe it's time to have that debate. Oh be quiet. Sunrise is a quite convenient testing ground, and I've borrowed quite a few ebuilds from there for the main tree. I haven't seen any issues in the last few months, those opposed seem to have finally accepted that users collaborating is not a stupid idea. And you get a nice recruiting area for free ... [Snip] If there's a place for the new project and maybe there is, the differences from and relationship with the Sunrise and proxy-maint projects, and the method of bringing in or justification for ignoring the hundreds of existing m-needed packages while arguably creating more, needs mapped out. Alternatively, bend the proposal into a status change for one or all of the above, and call a debate on that. I'd be for a discussion of all of the above since they are quite strongly linked.
