-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On 01/18/2016 09:44 PM, NP-Hardass wrote: > With all of the unclaimed herds and unclaimed packages within them, > I started to wonder what will happen after the GLEP 67 transition > finally comes to fruition. This left me with some concerns and I > was wondering what the community thinks about them, and some > possible solutions. > > There is a large number of packages from unclaimed herds that, at > this time, look like they will not be claimed by developers. This > will likely result in a huge increase in maintainer-needed packages > (and subsequent package rot). This isn't to say that some of > these packages weren't previously in a "maintainer-needed" like > state, but now, they will explicitly be there. > > A possible approach to reducing this is to adopt some new > policies. > > The first of which is an "adopt-a-package" type program. In > functionality, this is no different than proxy-maintenance, > however, this codifies it into an explicit policy whereby users are > encouraged to step and take over a package. This obviously > requires a greater developer presence in the proxy-maint project > (or something similar), but, personally, I think that a stronger > dev presence in proxy-maint would be better for Gentoo as a whole. > > The second policy change would be that maintainer-needed packages > can have updates by anyone while maintaining the standard "you fix > it if you break it" policy. This would extend to users as well. > With the increased ease that users can contribute via git/github, > they should be encouraged to contribute and have their efforts > facilitated to ease contributions to whatever packages they desire > (within the maintainer-needed category). > > Similar to the concept of a "bugday," coupled with above, an > "ebuildday" where users and devs get together so users can learn > to write ebuilds and for devs to work together to maintain packages > that usually fall outside their normal workload could prove > beneficial to the overall health of Gentoo packaging. > > Once again, these are just some random musings inspired by recent > events on the dev ML, and thought it might be worth discussing. > I've cc'd proxy-maint as a lot of this discussion is likely to > involve them, and would like them to put in their official opinion > as well. > > > I like the idea behind this, but as others have already indicated, there are some potential downfalls or redundancies. I think the biggest problem here is, to my knowledge we don't have a way to see how popular packages are. We don't know where to direct effort in the tree without bugs or complaints over IRC/fora/ML. To get that information we would need either volunteers or to violate our users' privacy, which I'm not in favor of.
So we have maintainer-needed and proxy-maint, which from what I can tell is a good gateway to becoming a developer. We could bring more attention to that, but not without some support from other developers who have an eye for spotting people who would be an asset to Gentoo. As mgorny said, it does no good for us to assign dead packages to a group of developers that won't give them the attention they deserve. I know I'm guilty of it. For better or worse, that's the nature of volunteer work. Users need to know that Gentoo's tree is only as rich as the time and effort that can go into it. We all have limitations on our time and energy, and if nobody's interested or capable enough to maintain packages, then it only makes sense to let them sit until someone comes along and either takes the package or treecleans it. Last rites exist to ensure that anybody who might care about a package will step up. They get 30 days, iirc. I think that's plenty of time. Since the tree's in git now, a user or would-be developer who wants to revive a package still has something to work with. They'll just have to fetch it from history, update it, and submit a PR or New-ebuild bug. I guess what I'm saying here is I like your idea. I just don't think we have the manpower or the interest among our users to make a big dent. We should maybe put a *little* more attention on proxy-maint, if they're okay with that, and let the community speak for themselves. If packages die, it's because no developer wants to or can maintain it and nobody in the community wanted to step up. Those that care can put them into an overlay or step up and contribute. My apologies if I'm coming off harsh. I don't mean to; it's just the way FOSS development works imo. - -- Daniel Campbell - Gentoo Developer OpenPGP Key: 0x1EA055D6 @ hkp://keys.gnupg.net fpr: AE03 9064 AE00 053C 270C 1DE4 6F7A 9091 1EA0 55D6 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iQIcBAEBCAAGBQJWn39iAAoJEAEkDpRQOeFwo48P/jjBXPO0vb7uuIsoRaTuKJ8D Edlzg8K35quvc09RGsofP2zC+Ywt/Qrh+reHWZxhrviZqpiwIbp7rUL0CnJJdku9 6NNtTsQDpcVAOWgIhIzqoZ/Ld0AJI+SqX2XwvLpGqzSqbZLTujD8IOHhjSqPH6bp STbNKhB1DYkhoXh1tDIe0raOcsOEbqTFWPzhwmOBPr3OtmNeezvsPA4kDWlqikYr SIRGPad4Mz6DtnWPyxXrFD9B5BpjD7T8LxlRCaMNI4exT156pS+DttyBq2LzQgbE KfwaLK9yXCFxeakWZuZPE/dP+8sMH5jddMMk0lhYoDca/QaQ6syMZ+zo5qjLg4jf LJqjSoEATDu7qbqllw/ZN3iSXOZKZ4e7mbGsStsD/z5381/ASfaUdS9b5Qfk3EBV 5KHkO37a/dgZ/LQjyYIMUGLUl7fSMtAI1nQB2qL2fUZCSh6sxX+rexqbTrM0hr0B UReH9w+HvW93XfHqBxyoSyq5q/9f+De0caLOKIBOtjz1XjmgIKCZtBEsY0coCGcS uQh5Ksoat/E0dARrc7XbRtgc59aWeEMMlU73YELgTGttvYQ3MqL4hQF0rnFNp2Rn ulnB3yKuzTtmesZDF+9ewCHUJJRTreOMZY9jsYKVVZVZQXHBT2ole3vNUBsyBbo4 5frJQ0E1xGmOa6CcfQRM =dh6h -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
