Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 09:51:58 +0100 "Christopher O'Neill"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
| Ideally, what I'd like is for the various dev teams to compile a
| weekly status report, which could then be compiled into the weekly
| newsletter (which currently seems to be lacking much useful
| information). It would be great if we (the users) could find out
| what's going on behind the scenes of our favourite distribution.
The problem with this is... Once someone says "we're working on $x",
they're continuously pestered about it by users asking when it will be
ready. Given how few of us are paid to work specific hours on Gentoo
things, it's very easy for provisional release dates to be missed --
and when half of a developer's time is spent responding to questions
about where $x is and why an early test of $x pulled out of a
supposedly "not for end users" repo broke their system and the other
half is spent writing status updates it's pretty much impossible to get
anything out consistently.
<snip>
Personally, I think this could be lessened by clear documenation. I know it's
mentioned in the handbook, but a dedicated topic on "why packages disappear and
how to find out why" would be invaluable. This would also help if meaningful
notes were added by the dev's on *why* a package was pulled. It isn't a enough
for some users to hear "it's broke". What if they want to help? Providing more
info in the changelog/p.mask or in package notes (I believe something like this
was mentioned some time ago in trying to help facilitate new devs coming up to
speed on projects). Also, if there was a single place for info about this, devs
would have a helpful place to link people instead of flaming/ignoring or
writing out answers to the same old questions.
--
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