On Tue, 2004-01-06 at 03:39, Robert Cole wrote: > On Mon January 05 2004 11:55 pm, Jon Portnoy wrote: > > Okay, let me explain a little bit about how the recruitment process > > works. > > I like it. That's a very good process. I'm talking about ebuilds here. I'll be > honest and say I don't know how the backend of the portage tree works with > security and all but maybe another tier would be in order if possible. Like a > low access new ebuild access that gets queued and not actually put in the > tree and someone with access could simply flag it to move into the tree or > reject it sending an email back to the creator of the ebuild why. That is exactly what is done with Bugzilla. If ti isn't being done on certain ebuild submissions, it should be. > Would simplify getting things in greatly. Then again such a process may > already exist I don't know. If it does exist it doesn't "appear" to be in > use. I say "appear" because it doesn't look that way to me but I don't see > the whole picture. I get the frontend of portage only and I see apps sit for > a year or more in bugs.gentoo.org. Bugs will stay in Bugzilla if no developer wants to maintain the package. At the end of the day, if I submit an ebuild that you created, *I* am responsible for it, not you. Many developers do not want to take on the responsibility of maintaining ebuilds that they know little to nothing about. I know I surely don't. > > You would be cautious too if there were an estimated quarter of a > > million systems at stake. > > Those systems aren't yours or any other gentoo devs responsibility. I think if > most gentoo users/admins would really really think about it they know the > risks they took when they started using gentoo. It's bleeding edge using > ACCEPT_KEYWORDS or not. I understand, and if every gentoo user would really > be honest with themselves, that my system could go POOF on the next world > update. I know mine has a few times in the earlier days of gentoo. That's > life on the bleeding edge. In a way, they are our responsibility. People expect a certain level of quality from our "distribution" and we are here to provide it. Gentoo has been much more "beta" or "bleeding-edge" in the past, but we are maturing, and quality control is a big issue for us right now. In fact, I would not be surprised if many developers wouldn't mind if the tree didn't grow any more right now and just the quality of the entire tree went up for a while. This is usually how we work when it comes close to time for a new release. We tend to try to stabilize and bug fix rather than try to add new "testing" packages. As for ACCEPT_KEYWORDS, Gentoo does not use ~ARCH as an unstable area. It is an area for testing EBUILDS, not for testing packages. If a package is unstable, it doesn't belong in our tree. Period. > New ebuilds are normally put in the testing area anyhow and if someone has a > system they really care about and have ACCEPT_KEYWORDS set and merge that new > package and it toasts their system then that's just a bummer ain't it? > Seriously who's at fault? Besides I've seen people moan about the loss of > their system now again but I don't recall anyone placing blame with the devs > but maybe I missed that. No. It is a bug that should be fixed by the developer/maintainer. It very well COULD be a developer's fault that someone's system went haywire. Usually, though, it is simply a combination of items which was not explicitly tested for and ends up being a bug in either the ebuild or the package itself. > > Does any of this mean that people are shut out from contributing? Not at > > all. > > Good enough for me I'll get to work on a few awesome packages that would make > a nice edition to the tree and see what happens dispite many packages that > currently sit in bugs.gentoo.org. Maybe they just need a maintainer and > tester. I'll start with those. Prolly ACID first. Got a portage bug to report > first. Yes. You can always add ebuilds to bugzilla. If you think people will be interested in them, stir up some support for them in the forums and have people test your ebuilds. Look at lots of ebuilds and see how the "official" developers do things and try to improve the general quality of your ebuilds. Try to help out on Bug Day. Prove yourself as a valuable asset to Gentoo and the development team will scoop you up quickly. It's that simple. -- Chris Gianelloni Developer, Gentoo Linux Games Team Is your power animal a penguin?