Mart Raudsepp wrote:
Hello,
I have had this project in my mind for a while, so it's about time to
get it out there, as to see if feedback finds it a good one - and if
that is so, if there are people who want to make it happen.
It is worded as a hypothetical project description for the purpose of
the text perhaps being a draft for the projects official description. So
in the following text instead of terms like "this project would be" I'm
purposely using terms like "this project is", as while writing it, it
got quickly very awkward writing "would be" and such all the time.
Please take it still as a proposal to be judged, commented, improved,
etc etc. And well, do that commenting and improving and volunteering ;)
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.
<SNIP>
----
Discuss! :)
Mart Raudsepp
Gentoo Developer
Mail: l...@gentoo.org
Weblog: http://planet.gentoo.org/developers/leio
So, to solve the problem of lack of manpower / interest causing packages
not to be added to the tree, Gentoo will create a dedicated project to
shove as many of these packages into the tree as possible?
In my opinion, you've failed to solve the real problem:
Where is the manpower and interest for this project going to come from?
All that's going to happen is Gentoo will have many many buggy and out
of date packages in the MAIN TREE. Exactly where they shouldn't be. You
claim quality won't be sacrificed, but I simply can't see this without
any attempt to solve the manpower issues first.
Isn't the purpose of this project already somewhat covered by Sunrise?
If developers are interested in shoving packages without a maintainer
into a tree (while not retaining quite the same level of responsibility
for them), can't they already do it there? A dedicated overlay which is
already monitored, but packages are not guaranteed to be as highly
maintained as those in the main tree (from my point of view of what
Sunrise is)
Proxy maintenance is already available via going directly to interested
developers / projects or via the Sunrise overlay.
As a user I would not like to see Gentoo pursue this policy. It's going
to create a situation where I can't trust that the packages in the main
tree are maintained to the level I expect.
To my knowledge, a list of maintainer-wanted bugs can already be easily
generated using Bugzilla's search feature. While some sort of more
organized format may possibly increase uptake of maintainer-wanted
packages, I'm dubious as to how much compared to the amount of effort
required to create it.
Summary: I believe that this project will create problems, not solve them.
Gentoo should be looking at ways to encourage user contributions to
Sunrise and proxy maintainership. In my opinion this would include more
publicizing of these avenues - for example, bring back the newsletter
and start features on Gentoo projects (who they are, what they do,
roadmap, help needed - basically the same as the status reports that
occasionally go to -devel), new developer profiles (again, instead of
these only going to -devel) and proxy maintainership / Sunrise (latest
additions, moves to main tree).
While the existing docs are quite good, perhaps look at how the
documentation on creating packages can be improved (perhaps start with a
basic "how to" on creating a simple ebuild, putting it in a local
overlay and manifesting it).
(Side note: I've started a very small project of putting up the Project
Status summaries on to the wiki[1], linked from the forums[4] and a
blog[2] post on Planet Larry[3] - it's not much, but it's a start that I
hope to build on in the future)
[1] http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Projects_Status
[2] http://allenjb.me.uk
[3] http://planet.larrythecow.org
[4] http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-763205.html
I think Gentoo could be doing more to reach out to users who may wish to
contribute rather than just waiting for them to come to them. While many
probably do read Planet Gentoo and some will sign up to -devel if they
are so inclined, I don't think these methods are as good as actively
reaching out to users on the forums and newsletter.
With regards to the forums, I realize many developer choose not to spend
time there because of their lack of free time, but is there anything
that could be done to improve this situation? Perhaps creating a
dedicated forum for package development (and splitting up "Portage &
Programming" generally - I personally think it's too much of a
catch-all). What about a forum setup that better resembles the project
setup so that individual projects can more easily find queries that are
likely to affect them?
AllenJB
