[gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Mike Frysinger]

This is your monthly friendly reminder !  Same bat time (typically the
2nd Thursday once a month), same bat channel (#gentoo-council @
irc.freenode.net) !

If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
Gentoo dev list to see.

Keep in mind that every *re*submission to the council for review must
first be sent to the gentoo-dev mailing list 7 days (minimum) before
being submitted as an agenda item which itself occurs 7 days before the
meeting.  Simply put, the gentoo-dev mailing list must be notified at
least 14 days before the meeting itself.

For more info on the Gentoo Council, feel free to browse our homepage:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Mike Frysinger]

On Wednesday 01 March 2006 04:17, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> Gentoo dev list to see.

so, GLEP44 is up right ?  any last questions ?  /me looks at solar

genone: can you show up to the meeting to represent ?
-mike
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Ned Ludd]

On Wed, 2006-03-01 at 19:28 -0500, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> On Wednesday 01 March 2006 04:17, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> > vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> > Gentoo dev list to see.
> 
> so, GLEP44 is up right ?  any last questions ?  /me looks at solar

Far as I'm concerned at this point we are just formalizing it.
I have no remaining questions or recommendations.

-- 
Ned Ludd <solar@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Linux

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[gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Mike Frysinger]

This is your monthly friendly reminder !  Same bat time (typically the
2nd Thursday at 2000 UTC), same bat channel (#gentoo-council @
irc.freenode.net) !

If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
Gentoo dev list to see.

Keep in mind that every GLEP *re*submission to the council for review
must first be sent to the gentoo-dev mailing list 7 days (minimum)
before being submitted as an agenda item which itself occurs 7 days
before the meeting.  Simply put, the gentoo-dev mailing list must be
notified at least 14 days before the meeting itself.

For more info on the Gentoo Council, feel free to browse our homepage:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Mike Frysinger]

This is your monthly friendly reminder !  Same bat time (typically
the 2nd Thursday at 2000 UTC / 1600 EST), same bat channel
(#gentoo-council @ irc.freenode.net) !

If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
Gentoo dev list to see.

Keep in mind that every GLEP *re*submission to the council for review
must first be sent to the gentoo-dev mailing list 7 days (minimum)
before being submitted as an agenda item which itself occurs 7 days
before the meeting.  Simply put, the gentoo-dev mailing list must be
notified at least 14 days before the meeting itself.

For more info on the Gentoo Council, feel free to browse our homepage:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/
-- 
gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Raúl Porcel]

I want to propose to the council to talk about the amd64 arch team and 
its big bug list [1] considering they are the most staffed arch team.

They have some bugs that are more than a month old and they are the last 
arch. Same for security bugs, and i think amd64 is an important arch and 
has a lot of users, and ATs. x86 doesn't have any AT active and we only 
have less than 10 bugs, amd64 has 144 bugs, and i'm talking about bugs 
with STABLEREQ keywords, just look at [1].

So it would be cool if they accepted help from other devs who don't have 
  an amd64 system but have access to one and can test stuff. Cla is 
willing to help.

There's even a bug that is a blocker...


[1]: http://tinyurl.com/3dms4y
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Richard Freeman]

Raúl Porcel wrote:
> 
> So it would be cool if they accepted help from other devs who don't have 
>  an amd64 system but have access to one and can test stuff. Cla is 
> willing to help.
> 

I think this may be more a question of what our policy should be 
regarding level of testing/stability accepted.  I'm sure manpower is a 
factor as well (number of devs isn't necessarily directly proportional 
to number of hours spent by those devs per week on gentoo).

I don't keyword a package stable unless I've done at least a moderate 
amount of testing on the package to ensure that it works.  If a package 
looks simple but obscure I might go ahead and install it and play with 
it, but I'd probably never keyword an emacs package stable, since I 
don't ever use emacs and I won't pretend that all there is to it is 
installing it and typing "hello world" and figuring out how to quit.

Also, the more critical a package is the less likely I am to keyword it 
without care - I'm not going to keyword apache stable unless I've 
installed it and put several of my php/cgi-perl apps through a fair 
number of chores since I know that people who run apache generally care 
that it works.

If there are folks out there who can test on amd64 systems then I'm sure 
that the amd64 team would look forward to their help (just contact 
kingtaco about it) - either by arch testing or perhaps by just 
keywording as appropriate.  However, we do need to be careful about just 
going on a hunt to close bugs - "if it builds then it's stable" isn't 
really a policy I think we want to follow.  As an amd64 user as well as 
a dev I know that I'd rather be a little further behind on package foo 
(with the ability to accept ~amd64 on it if I wanted to) than to have 
packages breaking every other week because somebody keyworded them just 
because it compiled and didn't have any glaring faults.

I think we also need better coordination across gentoo regarding when 
packages should be stabilized.  I've seen amd64 CC'ed on stablereq bugs 
filed by end users, and arch teams keywording them left and right, and 
there is no sign that the package maintainer wants the package 
stabilized.  I know that I'd be annoyed if arch teams stabilized a 
package that I maintained and I didn't intend for it to become stable 
for whatever reason.  At the very least maintainers should be contacted 
before packages go stable - and they should probably document their 
intent in STABLEREQ bugs before everybody goes crazy closing them out.

I think that if we have the right policies then we'll be where we want 
to be.  Personally, it doesn't concern me a great deal that there are 
tons of bugs open on an arch in and of itself (although blockers and 
security bugs are a different matter).  I'd rather that then keyword 
something stable anytime one person (usually not the maintainer) asks us 
to.  And users who feel like they're being held up should feel free to 
ping a dev to talk about it - and comments by users and maintainers in 
bugs indicating how stable a package really is make people like me more 
warm and fuzzy about keywording it without as much personal testing.
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Peter Weller]

On Saturday 01 March 2008 10:55:06 Raúl Porcel wrote:
> So it would be cool if they accepted help from other devs who don't have
>   an amd64 system but have access to one and can test stuff. Cla is
> willing to help.

Oh, I'd be more than happy to accept help from developers like that. It's just 
a case of what the "big bosses" think of it. Plus there's the fact that some 
other arches operate on a "it compiles, mark it stable" policy, and we don't 
want developers to bring that attitude to the amd64 team.
--
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Raúl Porcel]

Peter Weller wrote:
> 
> Oh, I'd be more than happy to accept help from developers like that. It's just 
> a case of what the "big bosses" think of it. Plus there's the fact that some 
> other arches operate on a "it compiles, mark it stable" policy, and we don't 
> want developers to bring that attitude to the amd64 team.

Hope you're not referring to any of my arches because that's not true :) 
In fact, if i did that, i wouldn't crash the alpha dev box so often, 
right Tobias?

And that just leaves arm,hppa,mips,ppc,ppc64,s390,sh :P
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Richard Freeman]

Raúl Porcel wrote:
> Peter Weller wrote:
>>
>> Oh, I'd be more than happy to accept help from developers like that.
>> It's just a case of what the "big bosses" think of it. Plus there's
>> the fact that some other arches operate on a "it compiles, mark it
>> stable" policy, and we don't want developers to bring that attitude to
>> the amd64 team.
> 
> Hope you're not referring to any of my arches because that's not true :)
> In fact, if i did that, i wouldn't crash the alpha dev box so often,
> right Tobias?
> 

I dunno - I just hit bug 211021 today while trying to clean out old
bugs.  Already stable on one arch and not a word from the maintainer.

I do agree with many of the posts in this thread by others - a big issue
is manpower.  However, I did want to mention that stabling packages
without input from maintainers seems to be a moderately-common practice.
 I'm sure the arch team leaders would welcome help if it were offered,
but it is more important that packages keyworded stable actually work
than for the latest-and-greatest package to be marked stable.
Interested users can volunteer to be ATs as well - in my past experience
as an AT when I keyworded a bug STABLE I could expect to see it
committed by a dev within a few hours.

While amd64 is a lot more mainstream than it used to be you can't just
assume that upstream wouldn't have released something if it didn't work
perfectly on amd64.

Somebody had commented that there are cases where there are
already-stable packages with bugs in them that are causing problems.
Feel free to ping one of us, or start a discussion on the -amd64 mailing
list, or email the amd64@ alias if necessary if something in particular
is causing major headaches.  Simply posting a comment in bug 37 out of
250 probably won't get much attention.  I'm sure all the amd64 devs want
to do what they can to help out those with more obscure packages.  There
are a LOT of packages marked stable on amd64 though, and while it has
improved greatly upstream still doesn't support it as well as it does
x86 (though I'm sure we won't get much sympathy from most of the other
archs in this regard :)  ).

No disputing that there is a problem - we just want to be careful that
the solution isn't worse than the problem...
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Raúl Porcel]

Richard Freeman wrote:
> Raúl Porcel wrote:
>> Peter Weller wrote:
>>> Oh, I'd be more than happy to accept help from developers like that.
>>> It's just a case of what the "big bosses" think of it. Plus there's
>>> the fact that some other arches operate on a "it compiles, mark it
>>> stable" policy, and we don't want developers to bring that attitude to
>>> the amd64 team.
>> Hope you're not referring to any of my arches because that's not true :)
>> In fact, if i did that, i wouldn't crash the alpha dev box so often,
>> right Tobias?
>>
> 
> I dunno - I just hit bug 211021 today while trying to clean out old
> bugs.  Already stable on one arch and not a word from the maintainer.
> 
> I do agree with many of the posts in this thread by others - a big issue
> is manpower.  However, I did want to mention that stabling packages
> without input from maintainers seems to be a moderately-common practice.

I've never seen that, unless the maintainer doesn't respond, like in 
this case, humpback has been ignoring his bugs for a long time, like 
other devs(unfortunately). Maybe the council should talk about that: 
devs ignoring his bugs for months, but i don't know how would they 
enforce that.

What i've seen is some bugs where the arches were cc'ed by users or by a 
developer, but in this case, someone of the arch team that knows that 
the dev is active, just uncc's all the arches until the maintainer 
responds, but in this case, humpback didn't say anything about the 
previous tor stabilization request for months. So you should be glad 
someone active like Christian, took over the maintenance and he is 
responsible if something goes wrong with the stabilization.

>  I'm sure the arch team leaders would welcome help if it were offered,
> but it is more important that packages keyworded stable actually work
> than for the latest-and-greatest package to be marked stable.
> Interested users can volunteer to be ATs as well - in my past experience
> as an AT when I keyworded a bug STABLE I could expect to see it
> committed by a dev within a few hours.

IIRC you are from the blubb era, i'm i right? Blubb did a really god job 
with amd64, and in fact amd64 started 'slacking' since blubb left. 
Unfortunately that doesn't work anymore, in a lot of bugs i've seen an 
AT of yours posting his results, when i was going to do my arches. So i 
was more faster even that i have no ATs.

And look at x86, we don't have any ATs, god, we even had some that moved 
to amd64! drac, mlangc, etc etc.
For example, bug 205242. Look, its mlangc! :P
> 
> While amd64 is a lot more mainstream than it used to be you can't just
> assume that upstream wouldn't have released something if it didn't work
> perfectly on amd64.
> 

Indeed, but on x86 we don't assume it either :) I don't understand how 
you having so many users, have manpower problems, you have two channels 
on IRC, x86 only has one and nobody says anything.
It's just a though, i'm not blaming anyone.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Ed W]

At one time there were some apps which reported back "usage" from 
people's systems and showed package versions in use?  Now, whilst this 
in itself is not an indication of package quality or bug-freeness.  
Perhaps it would be an interesting datastream to assist in deciding 
whether to mark a package stable or not?

An incremental improvement to such a plan might be to consider how to 
split the data into high quality devs and testers running stuff stuff, 
keen users and dev boxes (which might be crashing and are of low quality).

Sure it's a fairly low quality data source, but it might give a bit of 
confidence to take a punt unmasking a package if you can see that others 
are using it "actively"?

Just my 2p

Ed W
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Richard Freeman]

Raúl Porcel wrote:
> 
> IIRC you are from the blubb era, i'm i right? Blubb did a really god job
> with amd64, and in fact amd64 started 'slacking' since blubb left.
> Unfortunately that doesn't work anymore, in a lot of bugs i've seen an
> AT of yours posting his results, when i was going to do my arches. So i
> was more faster even that i have no ATs.
> 

Yup - blubb is certainly missed.  I can't point any fingers myself - I
try to find and stabilize packages as I'm able to, but I can only spend
so much time on gentoo.  Every little bit helps though, even if I'm not
high on the commits/day rankings.

There are amd64 ATs out there - which brings up the other thread
floating around.  We need better ways to flag bugs that have been
touched by an AT - for all I know there are a dozen open bugs that an AT
has tested, but if there aren't any keywords or anything else I can
query for, I can't get them stabilized.

> 
> Indeed, but on x86 we don't assume it either :) I don't understand how
> you having so many users, have manpower problems, you have two channels
> on IRC, x86 only has one and nobody says anything.
> It's just a though, i'm not blaming anyone.
> 

My observation is that there are heavy-lifters who do a disproportionate
share of the work.  I'm certainly not one of them, and I really do
appreciate these folks.  If a heavy-lifter gives attention to something,
it will shine.  However, Gentoo is a volunteer-driven organization, and
you can't order heavy-lifters to work on something in particular - it is
their passion for what they choose to work on that makes them so
effective.  I guess what we need is processes that enable lots of small
contributors to make a big difference - the bazzar approach.

Another reply on this thread pointed out that it would be nice to be
able to tell what packages people are using - if we could tell what is
being used it would help guide stabilization without sacrificing testing
(our users would be de-facto ATs without realizing it).  The power of a
thousand people doing very little can add up - many users would gladly
sign up to have their packages monitored if it would help the gentoo cause.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Peter Weller]

On Saturday 01 March 2008 10:55:06 Raúl Porcel wrote:
[..snip..]

There are also a number of problems with people on the team who are there 
soley so that they don't have to ask the team to mark a package stable for 
them - they can just go and stable it themselves. OK, this may help the amd64 
team in a minor way, but it would be much more preferable if they actually 
did any work *outside* of this.

Now, some of you may have noticed a certain level of inactivity from me 
lately, but rest assured that now that I have my new Core 2 Duo laptop more 
or less up and running, I'll be able to do more amd64 stuff.

welp
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Peter Volkov]

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В Сбт, 01/03/2008 в 14:39 +0000, Peter Weller пишет:
> There are also a number of problems with people on the team who are there 
> soley so that they don't have to ask the team to mark a package stable for 
> them - they can just go and stable it themselves.

It'll be even better if we prohibit such things by telling that
maintainer is not allowed to stabilize his/her packages. That said, 1. I
know that some packages will never be stabilized without such practice
but we could have list of such packages somewhere; 2. some archs do not
have enough developer to enforce this policy but x86 and amd64 are not
among them.

-- 
Peter.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Anant Narayanan]

Hi,

> If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> Gentoo dev list to see.

If it's not too late for this month's meeting, I'd like to discuss the  
possibility of including a new "post" in our developer base - the  
package maintainer.

a) The requirements to become a package maintainer for Gentoo may be  
lesser than that of the full-fledged developer. This serves a couple  
of purposes:
	- Users might become more motivated to becoming a maintainer for  
Gentoo, since it would require less time and effort from their end
	- Might reduce the number of orphaned packages we have in the tree

b) Some existing developers might want to switch to this post, if they  
feel that package maintenance is all they really want to do with  
Gentoo. This has the advantage of requiring lesser time from their  
side, while not feeling the pressure of being "responsible". We  
already have arch-testers, so this will fit in nicely with our current  
development model.

c) The actual developer post may be taken up by existing developers  
who make wide-ranging or significant changes to Gentoo, as a whole.  
Examples include: package manager development, eclasses,  
documentation; basically anything that would require a GLEP or commit  
access to the whole tree - you get the idea.

Some of you may argue that we already have proxy-maintainers. That's a  
great idea, all I'm asking for is for us to formalize the position.  
Giving a proxy-maintainer an official acknowledgement will definitely  
attract more users to contribute. Meanwhile, developers can do  
innovative things that they really like without having to maintain  
packages just because of a formality. Giving package maintainers  
commit access to parts of the tree might turn out to be tricky though,  
this needs discussion with infra.

I'd really like for us to think through this proposal - I strongly  
believe that this will improve the quality of Gentoo development as a  
whole, and reduce the number of open bugs and their turnaround times.

Cheers,
Anant

P.S. As some of you may have already guessed, this proposal is based  
on Debian's approval of a similar position in their developer  
hierarchy last year: http://www.us.debian.org/vote/2007/vote_003

P.P.S. Maybe this is more suited for -project, but everyone knows that  
nobody reads that list :-p
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Jean-Noël Rivasseau]

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I totally second this proposal.

I think this would be especially great for small or rarely used packages. I
can think of at least a dozen packages that I'd love to see in Portage, but
they are not in the tree. Allowing for people that are not developers to
maintain easy or not crucial packages is a good thing. It would not require
much effort for these people (since some packages are updated like once a
year), and even if the ebuilds are of low quality, that would not be a big
problem (we could mark those ebuilds specially so that if we developers have
some time to spare, we can review them).

The only problem I see, like Anant mentionned, is that we would need to
restrict commit access to parts of the tree. Not sure if that is possible.

Elvanör

On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 6:11 PM, Anant Narayanan <anant@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> > If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> > vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> > Gentoo dev list to see.
>
> If it's not too late for this month's meeting, I'd like to discuss the
> possibility of including a new "post" in our developer base - the
> package maintainer.
>
> a) The requirements to become a package maintainer for Gentoo may be
> lesser than that of the full-fledged developer. This serves a couple
> of purposes:
>        - Users might become more motivated to becoming a maintainer for
> Gentoo, since it would require less time and effort from their end
>        - Might reduce the number of orphaned packages we have in the tree
>
> b) Some existing developers might want to switch to this post, if they
> feel that package maintenance is all they really want to do with
> Gentoo. This has the advantage of requiring lesser time from their
> side, while not feeling the pressure of being "responsible". We
> already have arch-testers, so this will fit in nicely with our current
> development model.
>
> c) The actual developer post may be taken up by existing developers
> who make wide-ranging or significant changes to Gentoo, as a whole.
> Examples include: package manager development, eclasses,
> documentation; basically anything that would require a GLEP or commit
> access to the whole tree - you get the idea.
>
> Some of you may argue that we already have proxy-maintainers. That's a
> great idea, all I'm asking for is for us to formalize the position.
> Giving a proxy-maintainer an official acknowledgement will definitely
> attract more users to contribute. Meanwhile, developers can do
> innovative things that they really like without having to maintain
> packages just because of a formality. Giving package maintainers
> commit access to parts of the tree might turn out to be tricky though,
> this needs discussion with infra.
>
> I'd really like for us to think through this proposal - I strongly
> believe that this will improve the quality of Gentoo development as a
> whole, and reduce the number of open bugs and their turnaround times.
>
> Cheers,
> Anant
>
> P.S. As some of you may have already guessed, this proposal is based
> on Debian's approval of a similar position in their developer
> hierarchy last year: http://www.us.debian.org/vote/2007/vote_003
>
> P.P.S. Maybe this is more suited for -project, but everyone knows that
> nobody reads that list :-p
> --
> gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Marius Mauch]

On Wed, 5 Mar 2008 22:41:58 +0530
Anant Narayanan <anant@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> > If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> > vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> > Gentoo dev list to see.
> 
> If it's not too late for this month's meeting, I'd like to discuss
> the possibility of including a new "post" in our developer base -
> the package maintainer.
> 
> a) The requirements to become a package maintainer for Gentoo may be  
> lesser than that of the full-fledged developer.

Please elaborate on how a "full.fledged developer" would differ from a
"package maintainer" technically. What requirements and/or
priviledges do you think could be reduced?

Marius
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Anant Narayanan]

> Please elaborate on how a "full.fledged developer" would differ from a
> "package maintainer" technically. What requirements and/or
> priviledges do you think could be reduced?

I haven't thought that through fully (in hopes of a few good  
suggestions!), but off the top of my head, maintainers don't need to  
complete the staff quiz. On the technical side, about the only thing  
they really require is a sound knowledge of bash, the do's and don'ts  
of ebuilds, and knowledge of how to use eclasses. Perhaps we can  
create a separate quiz for maintainers, which stresses on versioning,  
handling bump requests, keeping ebuilds clean etc, and nothing more.  
I'm willing to help form the quiz, but I certainly can't do it alone.

As for the privileges, maintainers wouldn't need an email account,  
commit access to portions not concerning their package(s), voice on  
#gentoo-dev... Essentially, we need to keep limit the privileges to  
whatever infra can provide within reasonable limits - I expect the  
number of maintainers to be far greater than the developer count.

On another note, we may introduce a rule that no package may be marked  
stable unless a "full-fledged developer" or QA member has approved it  
(along with the usual arch-tester stamp). This might help in ensuring  
the quality of our stable tree.

--
Anant
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Denis Dupeyron]

On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 7:10 PM, Anant Narayanan <anant@gentoo.org> wrote:
>  maintainers don't need to complete the staff quiz.

The staff quiz is focused on our general procedures and how to behave
and interact with other devs. It is a great opportunity for the
recruiter to get to know who he (no "she"s in recruiters, applications
welcome) is talking to. It's at this time that I have the most
interesting discussions with the recruit and learn the most on the
individual (s)he is. We had enough issues in the past with technically
good people who just couldn't behave that I think skipping this phase
is really not a good idea. Because, believe it or not, the recruitment
process in general and the review in particular are not only about
checking yes/no boxes about the recruit's answers to obscure quizzes.
Plus, practically the staff quiz takes very little time. With the old
argument being that if you can't spend that little time on the staff
quiz then chances are you won't be a dev for long, and thus not worth
investing time in.

> On the technical side, about the only thing
>  they really require is a sound knowledge of bash, the do's and don'ts
>  of ebuilds, and knowledge of how to use eclasses.

This is currently what the ebuild quiz is trying to be. I don't
understand what difference you want to make between a full dev and a
package maintainer when both will have to write the same kind of
ebuilds, face the same kind of issues and have to come up with the
same kind of solutions. And in in the end create the same risk of
instability to the tree, only in a more fragmented, thus less
controllable way (due to more clueless people for the same job).

>  As for the privileges, maintainers wouldn't need an email account,
>  commit access to portions not concerning their package(s),

Meaning that they'll be allowed to break only a certain portion of the
tree. That's OK with me, as long as it's not the portion I use. I
believe some people depend on gentoo. I don't see any reason to risk
making their life miserable.

I hope you're not going to take any of the above personally. My
opinion is we have proxy maintenance and overlays like sunrise in
place already. If they're not working properly I suggest we fix them.
There's no point breaking something in the hope you'll fix something
else that doesn't work. Go to the root of the problem instead.

Denis.
-- 
gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Thomas Anderson]

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On Wednesday 05 March 2008 12:45:31 Marius Mauch wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Mar 2008 22:41:58 +0530
>
> Anant Narayanan <anant@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > > If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> > > vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> > > Gentoo dev list to see.
> >
> > If it's not too late for this month's meeting, I'd like to discuss
> > the possibility of including a new "post" in our developer base -
> > the package maintainer.
> >
> > a) The requirements to become a package maintainer for Gentoo may be
> > lesser than that of the full-fledged developer.
>
> Please elaborate on how a "full.fledged developer" would differ from a
> "package maintainer" technically. What requirements and/or
> priviledges do you think could be reduced?
>
> Marius

Perhaps there could be some honor code system at least, where the package 
maintainer would be restricted to their area of maintainership. 

but +1 from me, I'd be very interested in the position, considering I already 
proxy maintain a package.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Petteri Räty]

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Thomas Anderson kirjoitti:
>> Please elaborate on how a "full.fledged developer" would differ from a
>> "package maintainer" technically. What requirements and/or
>> priviledges do you think could be reduced?
>>
>> Marius
> 
> Perhaps there could be some honor code system at least, where the package 
> maintainer would be restricted to their area of maintainership. 
> 

This is the current situation.

Regards,
Petteri


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Thomas Anderson]

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On Wednesday 05 March 2008 14:41:32 Petteri Räty wrote:
> Thomas Anderson kirjoitti:
> >> Please elaborate on how a "full.fledged developer" would differ from a
> >> "package maintainer" technically. What requirements and/or
> >> priviledges do you think could be reduced?
> >>
> >> Marius
> >
> > Perhaps there could be some honor code system at least, where the package
> > maintainer would be restricted to their area of maintainership.
>
> This is the current situation.
>
> Regards,
> Petteri

Exactly, only the "package maintainers" wouldn't have everything that a full 
dev would have...

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Doug Goldstein]

Thomas Anderson wrote:
> On Wednesday 05 March 2008 14:41:32 Petteri Räty wrote:
>   
>> Thomas Anderson kirjoitti:
>>     
>>>> Please elaborate on how a "full.fledged developer" would differ from a
>>>> "package maintainer" technically. What requirements and/or
>>>> priviledges do you think could be reduced?
>>>>
>>>> Marius
>>>>         
>>> Perhaps there could be some honor code system at least, where the package
>>> maintainer would be restricted to their area of maintainership.
>>>       
>> This is the current situation.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Petteri
>>     
>
> Exactly, only the "package maintainers" wouldn't have everything that a full 
> dev would have...
>   
What exactly wouldn't they get? What would differ them from Arch Testers?
-- 
gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Thomas Anderson]

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On Wednesday 05 March 2008 14:59:55 Doug Goldstein wrote:
> Thomas Anderson wrote:
> > On Wednesday 05 March 2008 14:41:32 Petteri Räty wrote:
> >> Thomas Anderson kirjoitti:
> >>>> Please elaborate on how a "full.fledged developer" would differ from a
> >>>> "package maintainer" technically. What requirements and/or
> >>>> priviledges do you think could be reduced?
> >>>>
> >>>> Marius
> >>>
> >>> Perhaps there could be some honor code system at least, where the
> >>> package maintainer would be restricted to their area of maintainership.
> >>
> >> This is the current situation.
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >> Petteri
> >
> > Exactly, only the "package maintainers" wouldn't have everything that a
> > full dev would have...
>
> What exactly wouldn't they get? What would differ them from Arch Testers?

Arch Testers don't have tree access. This proposal gives the package 
maintainer the ability to commit their changes.

-- 
"Taylor and Anderson, Metropolitan prosecutors. Commit a crime? See you in 
court"

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Petteri Räty]

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Thomas Anderson kirjoitti:
> 
> Arch Testers don't have tree access. This proposal gives the package 
> maintainer the ability to commit their changes.
> 

How would you ensure ebuild quality for these package maintainers?

Regards,
Petteri


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Thomas Anderson]

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On Wednesday 05 March 2008 16:05:09 Petteri Räty wrote:
> Thomas Anderson kirjoitti:
> > Arch Testers don't have tree access. This proposal gives the package
> > maintainer the ability to commit their changes.
>
> How would you ensure ebuild quality for these package maintainers?
>
> Regards,
> Petteri

Maybe a small review board of 3-4 people to make sure that all new packages 
meet the requirements in the devmanual? Just an idea, maybe not the best.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Petteri Räty]

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Thomas Anderson kirjoitti:
> On Wednesday 05 March 2008 16:05:09 Petteri Räty wrote:
>> Thomas Anderson kirjoitti:
>>> Arch Testers don't have tree access. This proposal gives the package
>>> maintainer the ability to commit their changes.
>> How would you ensure ebuild quality for these package maintainers?
>>
>> Regards,
>> Petteri
> 
> Maybe a small review board of 3-4 people to make sure that all new packages 
> meet the requirements in the devmanual? Just an idea, maybe not the best.
 >

I don't think this would be an improvement over proxy maintenance.

Regards,
Petteri


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Anant Narayanan]

On 06-Mar-08, at 2:35 AM, Petteri Räty wrote:
> Thomas Anderson kirjoitti:
>> Arch Testers don't have tree access. This proposal gives the  
>> package maintainer the ability to commit their changes.
>
> How would you ensure ebuild quality for these package maintainers?

Maintainers will also go through a recruitment process, although a  
much shorter one which focusses only on ebuild maintenance -  
maintainers will not have the karma to introduce new ebuilds into the  
tree. The idea is to make the recruitment process as easy and quick as  
possible, while ensuring that the person involved has the requisite  
skills.

Also, packages may not be marked stable until a full-fledged-developer/ 
QA-member has approved of it. Packages being broken in the testing  
tree are not uncommon, and we are usually notified quickly enough to  
fix it.

--
Anant--
gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Alec Warner]

On 3/5/08, Anant Narayanan <anant@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On 06-Mar-08, at 2:35 AM, Petteri Räty wrote:
>  > Thomas Anderson kirjoitti:
>  >> Arch Testers don't have tree access. This proposal gives the
>  >> package maintainer the ability to commit their changes.
>  >
>  > How would you ensure ebuild quality for these package maintainers?
>
>
> Maintainers will also go through a recruitment process, although a
>  much shorter one which focusses only on ebuild maintenance -
>  maintainers will not have the karma to introduce new ebuilds into the
>  tree. The idea is to make the recruitment process as easy and quick as
>  possible, while ensuring that the person involved has the requisite
>  skills.

Maybe break this down for me again please:

What are the technical differences between a 'Package Maintainer' and
a 'Developer'?

I guess technical is the wrong word.  Lets back up.  What problem are
you trying to solve?

In your original mail; you stated that:

a) The requirements to become a package maintainer for Gentoo may be
lesser than that of the full-fledged developer. This serves a couple
of purposes:
       - Users might become more motivated to becoming a maintainer for
Gentoo, since it would require less time and effort from their end
       - Might reduce the number of orphaned packages we have in the tree

So your goals are:

Have more maintained packages in the tree.
Get more people (users) involved in making Gentoo better.

And you want to accomplish this by:

Creating a position that has less stringent requirements to encourage
interested folks to contribute.

Your point B) also mentions removing pressure from existing developers
by having some move to this new position to be less 'reponsible'.

Can you explain how this 'Package Maintainer' is 'less responsible'
than a full fledged developer?  Can you also explain in more detail
how the position of 'Package Maintainer' is also easier to obtain than
the position of 'Developer'?

You also stated:

"Meanwhile, developers can do innovative things that they really like
without having to maintain packages just because of a formality."

I'm a bit new here; but since when was it required for a developer to
maintain any packages?

I care a lot less about how to implement this idea technically (cvs
acls or lack of Gentoo.org e-mail address) and more so on what this
will actually gain us; and how we should go about designing this
position to accomplish the goals I think you want it to accomplish.

>
>  Also, packages may not be marked stable until a full-fledged-developer/
>  QA-member has approved of it. Packages being broken in the testing
>  tree are not uncommon, and we are usually notified quickly enough to
>  fix it.
>
>  --
>
> Anant--
>
> gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
>
>
--
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Doug Goldstein]

Thomas Anderson wrote:
> On Wednesday 05 March 2008 14:59:55 Doug Goldstein wrote:
>   
>> Thomas Anderson wrote:
>>     
>>> On Wednesday 05 March 2008 14:41:32 Petteri Räty wrote:
>>>       
>>>> Thomas Anderson kirjoitti:
>>>>         
>>>>>> Please elaborate on how a "full.fledged developer" would differ from a
>>>>>> "package maintainer" technically. What requirements and/or
>>>>>> priviledges do you think could be reduced?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Marius
>>>>>>             
>>>>> Perhaps there could be some honor code system at least, where the
>>>>> package maintainer would be restricted to their area of maintainership.
>>>>>           
>>>> This is the current situation.
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Petteri
>>>>         
>>> Exactly, only the "package maintainers" wouldn't have everything that a
>>> full dev would have...
>>>       
>> What exactly wouldn't they get? What would differ them from Arch Testers?
>>     
>
> Arch Testers don't have tree access. This proposal gives the package 
> maintainer the ability to commit their changes.
>
>   
So what you're looking for is committer ACLs. Gentoo's CVS currently 
does not use any form of ACLs to restrict access. This proposal would 
have to be discussed with the infra team to consider the feasibility to 
add ACLs to the tree.
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Robin H. Johnson]

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On Wed, Mar 05, 2008 at 04:07:48PM -0500, Doug Goldstein wrote:
>> Arch Testers don't have tree access. This proposal gives the package 
>> maintainer the ability to commit their changes.
> So what you're looking for is committer ACLs. Gentoo's CVS currently does 
> not use any form of ACLs to restrict access. This proposal would have to be 
> discussed with the infra team to consider the feasibility to add ACLs to 
> the tree.
As the CVS admin, I've considered them for a while, esp to help with
some of the access to parts of docs. The BSDs make very heavy use of
them successfully (and indeed wrote several of the CVS ACL systems).

But just on the having time side, I'd ask for a month or two to fully
implement them. I've got enough projects in progress right now without
adding another.

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
Gentoo Linux Developer & Infra Guy
E-Mail     : robbat2@gentoo.org
GnuPG FP   : 11AC BA4F 4778 E3F6 E4ED  F38E B27B 944E 3488 4E85

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Thomas Anderson]

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On Wednesday 05 March 2008 14:59:55 Doug Goldstein wrote:
> Thomas Anderson wrote:
> > On Wednesday 05 March 2008 14:41:32 Petteri Räty wrote:
> >> Thomas Anderson kirjoitti:
> >>>> Please elaborate on how a "full.fledged developer" would differ from a
> >>>> "package maintainer" technically. What requirements and/or
> >>>> priviledges do you think could be reduced?
> >>>>
> >>>> Marius
> >>>
> >>> Perhaps there could be some honor code system at least, where the
> >>> package maintainer would be restricted to their area of maintainership.
> >>
> >> This is the current situation.
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >> Petteri
> >
> > Exactly, only the "package maintainers" wouldn't have everything that a
> > full dev would have...
>
> What exactly wouldn't they get? What would differ them from Arch Testers?

Arch Testers don't have tree access. This proposal gives the package 
maintainer the ability to commit their changes.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Donnie Berkholz]

On 22:41 Wed 05 Mar     , Anant Narayanan wrote:
> If it's not too late for this month's meeting, I'd like to discuss the 
> possibility of including a new "post" in our developer base - the package 
> maintainer.

...

> I'd really like for us to think through this proposal - I strongly believe 
> that this will improve the quality of Gentoo development as a whole, and 
> reduce the number of open bugs and their turnaround times.

Could you talk to some Debian people about how it's working out for 
them? (Or find a webpage that does this already.) I know they started 
it, but I'm not sure of the good and bad things that resulted.

What I'm looking for is a list of potential costs & benefits.

One thing I do like about this idea is that it reintroduces more of a 
meritocracy.

Thanks,
Donnie
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Santiago M. Mola]

On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 6:11 PM, Anant Narayanan <anant@gentoo.org> wrote:
>  Some of you may argue that we already have proxy-maintainers. That's a
>  great idea, all I'm asking for is for us to formalize the position.
>  Giving a proxy-maintainer an official acknowledgement will definitely
>  attract more users to contribute.

IMO the problem with proxy-maintainers is that most users don't know
such a thing exists. I bet some users could proxy-maintain a lot of
orphaned packages if we potentiate proxy-maint.

-- 
Santiago M. Mola
Jabber ID: cooldwind@gmail.com
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Zhang Le]

On 21:07 Wed 05 Mar     , Santiago M. Mola wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 6:11 PM, Anant Narayanan <anant@gentoo.org> wrote:
> >  Some of you may argue that we already have proxy-maintainers. That's a
> >  great idea, all I'm asking for is for us to formalize the position.
> >  Giving a proxy-maintainer an official acknowledgement will definitely
> >  attract more users to contribute.
> 
> IMO the problem with proxy-maintainers is that most users don't know
> such a thing exists. I bet some users could proxy-maintain a lot of
> orphaned packages if we potentiate proxy-maint.

++

IMO giving proxy-maintainer due credit and publicity, meaning make it a formal
position, could solve the very problem Anant's proposal intended to solve.

Zhang Le
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Josh Saddler]

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Anant Narayanan wrote:
> [stuff]

So basically, what you're looking for is something like Arch Linux's
Trusted User (TU) concept[1].

That works for Arch, because they have 5 repositories (including a
community repo), but I'm not sure how well that would fit Gentoo, where
there's just one.

We'd need some pretty extensive ACLs to make your proposal work, so
you'd need to talk to infra about that.



[1] http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_Trusted_User_Guidelines


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Roy Marples]

On Wednesday 05 March 2008 17:11:58 Anant Narayanan wrote:
> If it's not too late for this month's meeting, I'd like to discuss the
> possibility of including a new "post" in our developer base - the
> package maintainer.
>
> a) The requirements to become a package maintainer for Gentoo may be
> lesser than that of the full-fledged developer. This serves a couple
> of purposes:
> 	- Users might become more motivated to becoming a maintainer for
> Gentoo, since it would require less time and effort from their end
> 	- Might reduce the number of orphaned packages we have in the tree

Adding user repos to layman isn't good enough?
Plus, there's always sunrise.

Thanks

Roy
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Sébastien Fabbro]

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On Wed, 5 Mar 2008, Anant Narayanan <anant@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> If it's not too late for this month's meeting, I'd like to discuss
> the possibility of including a new "post" in our developer base -
> the package maintainer.
> 

The idea is interesting. We have been thinking about something similar
in the sci team. We are already maintaining some packages we don't know
how to test. We also don't particularly like the idea of getting
scientific results based on untested software.

The overlays are not a solution. Packages in the overlays do not
go through keywording or stabilisation processes, do not get all the
publicity, and don't have bug support as advanced as the ones in the
main tree.

In all the sci* herds, we have more than 180 requests for new
packages only in bugzilla. Our active team is small and overloaded with
already more than 430 packages to maintain. Many other teams are facing
the same issue. We have contacted some talented ebuild submitters who
neither want to spend the time nor feel the responsibility of a full
dev. A formal proxy-maintainer could really help in our sometimes blind
maintaining duties.

--
Sébastien

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Ioannis Aslanidis]

For what I have been reading through, it seems that satisfying this
particular necessity for some herds would cause a problem to other
herds that are currently fine with the overlays or even with
proxy-maintenance. Perhaps a dual solution would fit better the needs
of everyone and improve the overall efficiency. There is no need to do
a change to worse where not applicable. Let the herds decide upon
their needs.

Just my 2 cents.

On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 10:02 AM, Sébastien Fabbro <bicatali@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Mar 2008, Anant Narayanan <anant@gentoo.org> wrote:
>  >
>  > If it's not too late for this month's meeting, I'd like to discuss
>  > the possibility of including a new "post" in our developer base -
>  > the package maintainer.
>  >
>
>  The idea is interesting. We have been thinking about something similar
>  in the sci team. We are already maintaining some packages we don't know
>  how to test. We also don't particularly like the idea of getting
>  scientific results based on untested software.
>
>  The overlays are not a solution. Packages in the overlays do not
>  go through keywording or stabilisation processes, do not get all the
>  publicity, and don't have bug support as advanced as the ones in the
>  main tree.
>


-- 
Ioannis Aslanidis

<deathwing00[at]gentoo.org> 0x47F370A0

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Marius Mauch]

On Thu, 6 Mar 2008 09:02:09 +0000
Sébastien Fabbro <bicatali@gentoo.org> wrote:

> We have contacted some talented ebuild submitters who neither want to
> spend the time nor feel the responsibility of a full dev.

Maybe we should try to solve that problem instead of making our
hierarchy even more complex.
What exact time constraints and responsibilities are people afraid of?
Are those concerns real or just myths?

> A formal proxy-maintainer could really help in our sometimes blind
> maintaining duties.

What would be the difference between a "formal proxy-maintainer" and
how we handle it currently?

Marius
--
gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Natanael Copa]

On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 19:48 +0100, Marius Mauch wrote:

> What exact time constraints and responsibilities are people afraid of?
> Are those concerns real or just myths?

As someone who just sent in the quiz, yes its real concerns. What scared
me off mostly is the gentoo politics. The entire process to become a
"gentoo developer" is a scare off. Took me weeks to complete the quiz. I
want to help, yes, but I do have a life.

> > A formal proxy-maintainer could really help in our sometimes blind
> > maintaining duties.
> 
> What would be the difference between a "formal proxy-maintainer" and
> how we handle it currently?

It's documented? I hardly know it was possible. I have heard the term
proxy maintainer a few time and offerend to become one without beeing
100% what it was. I talked about to become a dev only to be able to
maintain a handful ebuilds but was even recommended to not do that due
to QA issues. That kind of turned me off [1].

At the same time I go the offer to maintain a package in FreeBSD. I said
yes because it was very simple. So I have been a freebsd ports
maintainer for years, while it took me years to actually take the step
to fill in the quiz, even if i run gentoo on desktop and run my own
distro based on Gentoo.

I'd probably not do the quiz again but I'd be more than happy to
maintain a few packages.

> Marius

-nc

[1]http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org/msg15926.html

PS. The entire thread is kind of interesting to read.


-- 
gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Alec Warner]

On 3/9/08, Natanael Copa <natanael.copa@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 19:48 +0100, Marius Mauch wrote:
>
>  > What exact time constraints and responsibilities are people afraid of?
>  > Are those concerns real or just myths?
>
>
> As someone who just sent in the quiz, yes its real concerns. What scared
>  me off mostly is the gentoo politics. The entire process to become a
>  "gentoo developer" is a scare off. Took me weeks to complete the quiz. I
>  want to help, yes, but I do have a life.

If you have other methods to avoid contributors who suck; I'd like to hear them.

We have had problems where people sign up in the past and then never
do anything and it wastes our time trying to teach them how the tree
works.  We would rather spend that time helping out developers who
like, actually do work.

>
>
>  > > A formal proxy-maintainer could really help in our sometimes blind
>  > > maintaining duties.
>  >
>  > What would be the difference between a "formal proxy-maintainer" and
>  > how we handle it currently?
>
>
> It's documented? I hardly know it was possible. I have heard the term
>  proxy maintainer a few time and offerend to become one without beeing
>  100% what it was. I talked about to become a dev only to be able to
>  maintain a handful ebuilds but was even recommended to not do that due
>  to QA issues. That kind of turned me off [1].

Granted, that e-mail was from October 2006 ;)

>
>  At the same time I go the offer to maintain a package in FreeBSD. I said
>  yes because it was very simple. So I have been a freebsd ports
>  maintainer for years, while it took me years to actually take the step
>  to fill in the quiz, even if i run gentoo on desktop and run my own
>  distro based on Gentoo.

I can certainly invision cvs ACLs if people are worried about that
sort of thing; but it doesn't mitigate the fact that maintainers need
to know what they are doing.

Did freeBSD not care if you knew what you were doing?  What happens if
you totally screw up your package?  What happens if you do something
malicious?

>
>  I'd probably not do the quiz again but I'd be more than happy to
>  maintain a few packages.
>
>  > Marius
>
>  -nc
>
>  [1]http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org/msg15926.html
>
>  PS. The entire thread is kind of interesting to read.
>
>
>
>  --
>  gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
>
>
-- 
gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Roy Marples]

On Monday 10 March 2008 05:21:51 Alec Warner wrote:
> Did freeBSD not care if you knew what you were doing?  What happens if
> you totally screw up your package?  What happens if you do something
> malicious?

Gentoo has a cvs-commit mailing list, so everyone knows if they care enough.

I suggest you remove those rose tinted specs of yours unless you are 
suggesting that a Gentoo dev has never committed a broken ebuild or eclass :) 
Devs make mistakes, only less than other people by virtue of spending more 
time working on similar stuff.

Lastly, taking a quiz is no measure of being malicious or not. You would have 
to interact with the person to know if they are capable for that.

Thanks

Roy
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Denis Dupeyron]

On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 9:29 AM, Roy Marples <roy@marples.name> wrote:
>  Lastly, taking a quiz is no measure of being malicious or not.

As I wrote elsewhere, the recruitment process is more than just the quizzes.

> You would have
>  to interact with the person to know if they are capable for that.

Which is exactly what happens during that other important part of the
recruitment process, i.e. the review. It gives no guaranty of the
future dev not being malicious, but we at least get a good idea and
can refuse him/her if we feel it's necessary. This has happened once
since I've been a recruiter, after lengthy discussions and
investigations.

Denis.
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Natanael Copa]

On Sun, 2008-03-09 at 21:21 -0800, Alec Warner wrote:
> On 3/9/08, Natanael Copa <natanael.copa@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >  On Fri, 2008-03-07 at 19:48 +0100, Marius Mauch wrote:
> >
> >  > What exact time constraints and responsibilities are people afraid of?
> >  > Are those concerns real or just myths?
> >
> >
> > As someone who just sent in the quiz, yes its real concerns. What scared
> >  me off mostly is the gentoo politics. The entire process to become a
> >  "gentoo developer" is a scare off. Took me weeks to complete the quiz. I
> >  want to help, yes, but I do have a life.
> 
> If you have other methods to avoid contributors who suck; I'd like to hear them.

I don't have any silver bullets, sorry.

> I can certainly invision cvs ACLs if people are worried about that
> sort of thing; but it doesn't mitigate the fact that maintainers need
> to know what they are doing.

ACL's... yuck... git might be an idea though. "signed-off-by", kernel
style. Don't have enough experience with gentoo managemet to know if git
fit's the management style. (probably not, since its not used already)

> Did freeBSD not care if you knew what you were doing?  What happens if
> you totally screw up your package?  What happens if you do something
> malicious?

I'm a "maintainer" not a "committer". I don't have commit access.

-nc

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Peter Volkov]

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В Пнд, 10/03/2008 в 06:12 +0100, Natanael Copa пишет:
> Took me weeks to complete the quiz. I want to help, yes, but I do have
> a life.

What were the problems? Do you think that knowledge of answers to the
questions asked in quiz are not required to do actual work on ebuilds in
the tree? What were that questions?

> It's documented?

It is mentioned in some places on website but no, it's not documented as
I see.

-- 
Peter.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Alec Warner]

On 3/10/08, Peter Volkov <pva@gentoo.org> wrote:
> В Пнд, 10/03/2008 в 06:12 +0100, Natanael Copa пишет:
>
> > Took me weeks to complete the quiz. I want to help, yes, but I do have
>  > a life.
>
>
> What were the problems? Do you think that knowledge of answers to the
>  questions asked in quiz are not required to do actual work on ebuilds in
>  the tree? What were that questions?
>
>  > It's documented?
>
>  It is mentioned in some places on website but no, it's not documented as
>  I see.

It is one of many of my dead projects ;)

http://dev.gentoo.org/~antarus/projects/proxy-maint/

>
>  --
>
> Peter.
>
>
│ИМ╒┤^╬X╛╤х\x1e·з(╒╦&j)b·	b╡

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Peter Volkov]

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В Пнд, 10/03/2008 в 04:13 -0800, Alec Warner пишет:
> On 3/10/08, Peter Volkov <pva@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > В Пнд, 10/03/2008 в 06:12 +0100, Natanael Copa пишет:
> >  > It's documented?
> >
> >  It is mentioned in some places on website but no, it's not documented as
> >  I see.
> 
> It is one of many of my dead projects ;)
> 
> http://dev.gentoo.org/~antarus/projects/proxy-maint/

This is outside www.gentoo.org :P

And it's not clear how to became proxy-maintainer. Also current list of
proxy-maintainers could be grep'ed from metadata.xml. e.g. for shorewall
proxy-maintainer is listed in maintainer tag, just have not @gentoo.org
e-mail. But may be we should introduce some attribute (proxy-maintainer)
to mark position explicitly. And all current developers are commiters...

-- 
Peter.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Jeroen Roovers]

On 01 Mar 2008 05:30:01
Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> wrote:

> This is your monthly friendly reminder !  Same bat time (typically
> the 2nd Thursday at 2000 UTC / 1600 EST), same bat channel
> (#gentoo-council @ irc.freenode.net) !
> 
> If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> Gentoo dev list to see.

The list of architectures that Gentoo supports is one of its greatest
assets. It is important that Gentoo makes available an as large as
possible set of packages to as many platforms as is sanely doable. For
this purpose we have a testing and stabilisation system that depends on
architecture keywords being propagated from one version to the next. I
would like to stress to all package maintainers that dropping keywords,
i.e. removing any architecture's keyword entirely, instead of replacing
"arch" with "~arch", _hurts_ the Gentoo Project.

Dropping a keyword should be done in exactly three cases:
1) When newly added dependencies for a version have not been keyworded.
2) When there is evidence that the new version contains architecture
porting regressions, i.e. upstream knows or strongly suspects that a
specific version no longer supports a specific architecture.
3) When a precompiled version is not available for a specific
architecture.

When a keyword is being dropped for one of the three reasons stated
above, the relevant arch team should be notified by way of a bug,
assigned to the package maintainer, and the arch team should be CC'd,
explaining what should be done to validate readding the dropped
keyword. Of course, if any dependencies can be keyworded in advance of
adding the ebuild for which keywords would need to be dropped, as long
as the arch teams respond in due time by keywording the new
dependencies, dropping the keywords can be prevented entirely and fewer
developers will get less work on their hands, but this does require
better planning, and possibly holding off committing the new ebuild for
a week (or two).

When keywords have been dropped invalidly, a bug should be reported and
assigned to the package maintainer. Arch teams should not be burdened
with this task but may be CC'd on the bug to notify them of the
situation. It should be clear to all ebuild developers that maintaining
keywords is not the domain of the arch teams: Like the rest of any
ebuild, it is the maintainer's responsibility to ensure keywords are
soundly propagated from one version to the next, and the maintainer's
responsibility to correct when a keyword has been dropped.
-- 
gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Petteri Räty]

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Jeroen Roovers kirjoitti:
> On 01 Mar 2008 05:30:01
> Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
>> This is your monthly friendly reminder !  Same bat time (typically
>> the 2nd Thursday at 2000 UTC / 1600 EST), same bat channel
>> (#gentoo-council @ irc.freenode.net) !
>>
>> If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
>> vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
>> Gentoo dev list to see.
> 
> The list of architectures that Gentoo supports is one of its greatest
> assets. It is important that Gentoo makes available an as large as
> possible set of packages to as many platforms as is sanely doable. For
> this purpose we have a testing and stabilisation system that depends on
> architecture keywords being propagated from one version to the next. I
> would like to stress to all package maintainers that dropping keywords,
> i.e. removing any architecture's keyword entirely, instead of replacing
> "arch" with "~arch", _hurts_ the Gentoo Project.
> 

I couldn't find in your post what you want the council to discuss?

Regards,
Petteri


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Jeroen Roovers]

On Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:41:12 +0200
Petteri Räty <betelgeuse@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Jeroen Roovers kirjoitti:
> > On 01 Mar 2008 05:30:01
> > Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > 
> >> This is your monthly friendly reminder !  Same bat time (typically
> >> the 2nd Thursday at 2000 UTC / 1600 EST), same bat channel
> >> (#gentoo-council @ irc.freenode.net) !
> >>
> >> If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
> >> vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
> >> Gentoo dev list to see.
> > 
> > The list of architectures that Gentoo supports is one of its
> > greatest assets. It is important that Gentoo makes available an as
> > large as possible set of packages to as many platforms as is sanely
> > doable. For this purpose we have a testing and stabilisation system
> > that depends on architecture keywords being propagated from one
> > version to the next. I would like to stress to all package
> > maintainers that dropping keywords, i.e. removing any
> > architecture's keyword entirely, instead of replacing "arch" with
> > "~arch", _hurts_ the Gentoo Project.
> > 
> 
> I couldn't find in your post what you want the council to discuss?

One current and pressing issue. Neatly explained, a solution thought
through and well layed out. As a Council you'd only need to lay down
the law.
--
gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Petteri Räty]

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Jeroen Roovers kirjoitti:
> On Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:41:12 +0200
> Petteri Räty <betelgeuse@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
>> Jeroen Roovers kirjoitti:
>>> On 01 Mar 2008 05:30:01
>>> Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> This is your monthly friendly reminder !  Same bat time (typically
>>>> the 2nd Thursday at 2000 UTC / 1600 EST), same bat channel
>>>> (#gentoo-council @ irc.freenode.net) !
>>>>
>>>> If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
>>>> vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
>>>> Gentoo dev list to see.
>>> The list of architectures that Gentoo supports is one of its
>>> greatest assets. It is important that Gentoo makes available an as
>>> large as possible set of packages to as many platforms as is sanely
>>> doable. For this purpose we have a testing and stabilisation system
>>> that depends on architecture keywords being propagated from one
>>> version to the next. I would like to stress to all package
>>> maintainers that dropping keywords, i.e. removing any
>>> architecture's keyword entirely, instead of replacing "arch" with
>>> "~arch", _hurts_ the Gentoo Project.
>>>
>> I couldn't find in your post what you want the council to discuss?
> 
> One current and pressing issue. Neatly explained, a solution thought
> through and well layed out. As a Council you'd only need to lay down
> the law.

Isn't what you wrote the existing policy?

Regards,
Petteri


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Fri, 07 Mar 2008, Petteri Räty wrote:
>>> Jeroen Roovers kirjoitti:
>>>> The list of architectures that Gentoo supports is one of its
>>>> greatest assets. It is important that Gentoo makes available
>>>> an as large as possible set of packages to as many platforms
>>>> as is sanely doable. For this purpose we have a testing and
>>>> stabilisation system that depends on architecture keywords
>>>> being propagated from one version to the next. I would like
>>>> to stress to all package maintainers that dropping keywords,
>>>> i.e. removing any architecture's keyword entirely, instead of
>>>> replacing "arch" with "~arch", _hurts_ the Gentoo Project.

> Isn't what you wrote the existing policy?

If it is, then the last question of the end-quiz should be changed:

| 19. You are bumping foomatic's ebuild from version 1.5 to version
|     2.0. This new version is a massive rewrite which introduces
|     huge changes to the build system, the required libraries
|     and how the code works. What will you do for KEYWORDS here?

My answer to it (about one year ago) wasn't in agreement with Jeroen's
above statement, but my mentor and my recruiter were satisfied with it
at the time.

Ulrich
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[George Shapovalov]

Friday, 7. March 2008, Ulrich Mueller Ви написали:
> > Isn't what you wrote the existing policy?
>
> If it is, then the last question of the end-quiz should be changed:
> | 19. You are bumping foomatic's ebuild from version 1.5 to version
> |     2.0. This new version is a massive rewrite which introduces
> |     huge changes to the build system, the required libraries
> |     and how the code works. What will you do for KEYWORDS here?
But there are different situations, and there are two questions in the quiz to 
reflect that (IIRC the other one is one or two questions before this #19). 
And, I believe, these were added after the issue was brought up by arch 
testers here quite some time ago. Rhat is, there is a difference between a 
trivial bump and a major update. E.g., you don't expect trouble from some 
minor bug fix but things may not work anymore or require major adjustments 
when some big backend changes are made or build system is changed (like 
recently it became popular to replace autotools with CMake).

George
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Petteri Räty]

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Ulrich Mueller kirjoitti:
> 
>> Isn't what you wrote the existing policy?
> 
> If it is, then the last question of the end-quiz should be changed:
> 
> | 19. You are bumping foomatic's ebuild from version 1.5 to version
> |     2.0. This new version is a massive rewrite which introduces
> |     huge changes to the build system, the required libraries
> |     and how the code works. What will you do for KEYWORDS here?
> 
> My answer to it (about one year ago) wasn't in agreement with Jeroen's
> above statement, but my mentor and my recruiter were satisfied with it
> at the time.
> 
> Ulrich

How is the question wrong? You are just stating the recruiters didn't 
think the answer was what it was supposed to be.

Regards,
Petteri


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[gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Mike Frysinger]

This is your monthly friendly reminder !  Same bat time (typically
the 2nd Thursday at 2000 UTC / 1600 EST), same bat channel
(#gentoo-council @ irc.freenode.net) !

If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
Gentoo dev list to see.

Keep in mind that every GLEP *re*submission to the council for review
must first be sent to the gentoo-dev mailing list 7 days (minimum)
before being submitted as an agenda item which itself occurs 7 days
before the meeting.  Simply put, the gentoo-dev mailing list must be
notified at least 14 days before the meeting itself.

For more info on the Gentoo Council, feel free to browse our homepage:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/

[gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Mike Frysinger]

This is your monthly friendly reminder !  Same bat time (typically
the 3rd Thursday at 1800 UTC / 2000 CET / 1400 EST), same bat channel
(#gentoo-council @ irc.freenode.net) !

If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even
vote on, let us know !  Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole
Gentoo dev list to see.

Keep in mind that every GLEP *re*submission to the council for review
must first be sent to the gentoo-dev mailing list 7 days (minimum)
before being submitted as an agenda item which itself occurs 7 days
before the meeting.  Simply put, the gentoo-dev mailing list must be
notified at least 14 days before the meeting itself.

For more info on the Gentoo Council, feel free to browse our homepage:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/

Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Mike Frysinger]

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On Monday 01 March 2010 00:30:01 Mike Frysinger wrote:

thought i disabled this ... oh well, fixed now
-mike

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