Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: rfc: revisiting our stabilization policy

[Steev Klimaszewski <steev@gentoo.org>]

On Fri, 2014-01-24 at 04:04 +0100, Tom Wijsman wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Jan 2014 18:04:19 -0600
> Steev Klimaszewski <steev@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> > Your "suggestion" was expanding the "arm" keyword to "armv4-linux",
> > "armv5-linux", "armv6-linux", "armv6-hardfloat-linux",
> > "armv7-softfp-linux", "armv7-hardfloat-linux",
> > "armv7-hardfloat-uclibc-linux" - that is nowhere near a good solution.
> 
> We've ran over the reasons and they have appeared as fit for this idea.
> 
> It can be prejudged as "nowhere near a good solution"; but for it to
> actually be that, it would need solid reasoning that people agree on.
> 
> Reasoning is also needed to be able to figure out which conditions are
> fit for another solution; that way, the other solutions could be shaped
> with the help of that feedback to make the other solutions better.
> 
> > The /dev/null comment was about wanting others to do the work and not
> > contributing anything more than (imo) a stupid idea
> 
> The idea moves work from one place to another, which yields the same
> amount of work; your work statement seems like another topic, which you
> are making basic assumptions on. Solutions to the stated actual problem
> are neglected, as more time for research and consideration is needed.
> 

> To get on the topic of your work statement; consider that one can find
> 7 people whom each have one arm configuration much faster than one can
> find 1 person that has all of them.
> 

The idea moves the work around, it doesn't lessen the workload at all.
You can easily find 7 people who have an armv7, and even v6, since the
rpi is quite popular.  Getting them into the arch team and willing to
run stable and actually test programs is a whole other story, which lead
to you saying:

"People that have certain architectures can just add themselves, no
extra work again."

And that's a show stopper, just randomly adding yourself to an arch team
and claiming you've tested it is a nonstarter.  Considering if there IS
an issue, we then have to track you down and figure out why/what is
different in the configuration that it's failing for others.  You being
on the QA team even offering that up as an option makes it questionable
as to why you're on the QA team.  That should never even be thought of
as an option.

What you've thrown out as a possible solution is akin to taking a pile
of peas on the plate and moving them around the plate so that the pile
doesn't look so big.  

It doesn't change the amount of work, but you do need to look in more
places for the work.  Finding people with the hardware is the main
issue, and I think I mentioned before, some people are simply unwilling
to invest in "slow" hardware, so we have to rely on the people who DO
have it.  And if that means things take longer to stable, well, why is
that an issue?  Stable is supposed to be that - stable.  

> > if you aren't willing to put in the work, don't expect others to.
> 
> If you are unwilling to work towards solutions, don't expect others to.
> 
> > And yes, I see what you mean now re: my reply seeming off - it would
> > seem when I hit group reply, for some reason, Evolution is putting
> > Peter Stuge into the CC, and not Tom Wijsman (despite hitting group
> > reply from your email.  Maybe there should have been more testing of
> > Gnome 3.8 before it was stabled on x86...
> 
> http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
> http://woozle.org/~neale/papers/reply-to-still-harmful.html
> 

I don't care of "reply to" is considered harmful, I care that something
that worked with the previous stable is suddenly not working with the
new stable.  It obviously shows that it wasn't tested properly, and yet
was marked stable.  So, as QA, shouldn't you be doing something about
that, rather than pointing to some URLs on the web, telling me I'm in
the wrong for using the option that is supposed to handle that properly
in my stable software?