[gentoo-dev] New USE flags documentation

[gentoo-dev] New USE flags documentation

[Jose Luis Rivero]

Hi all:

I've read on the planet the recently included support to document USE
flags in metadata. Seems like it was an idea from flameeyes and cardoe,
discussed on the planet [1][2] and performed by -infra (bug #199788).

While planet is a good medium to share ideas and get contributors, seems to
me like we need a more official way to discuss this kind of 'global'
ideas before make them real. Or at least drop a note on -dev-announce
explaining the new feature and telling devs and users this is now
officially supported.

I'm not asking for an extra overhead of 'bureaucracy' (write specs,
mailling @dev, send to the council, etc.) but a bit more of communication 
would be appreciated:

Is the feature ready to be used? Is there any kind of documentation
(aside of DTD)? It will replace use.desc?

Thanks. 

[1] http://farragut.flameeyes.is-a-geek.org/articles/2007/11/24/proposing-more-use-flag-documentation
[2] http://blog.cardoe.com/archives/2007/11/23/metadataxml-updates-examples/

-- 
Jose Luis Rivero <yoswink@gentoo.org>
Gentoo/Doc Gentoo/Alpha

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] New USE flags documentation

[Thilo Bangert]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 983 bytes --]

> While planet is a good medium to share ideas and get contributors,
> seems to me like we need a more official way to discuss this kind of
> 'global' ideas before make them real. Or at least drop a note on
> -dev-announce explaining the new feature and telling devs and users
> this is now officially supported.

yoswink, thanks for bringing the discussion to gentoo-dev - i was not 
aware of such an effort.

> Is the feature ready to be used? Is there any kind of documentation
> (aside of DTD)? It will replace use.desc?

the idea is really great IMHO and the implementation is pretty straight 
forward. thanks to flameeyes and cardoe for putting their heads together.

now this needs to be extended and made mandatory for all ebuilds. in order 
to reduce the workload the global useflags should only be documented 
once - while still allowing ebuilds to extend (or even override?) the 
global description.

great stuff all around.
happy hacking

Thilo


[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part. --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] New USE flags documentation

[Doug Goldstein]

Jose Luis Rivero wrote:
> Hi all:
>
> I've read on the planet the recently included support to document USE
> flags in metadata. Seems like it was an idea from flameeyes and cardoe,
> discussed on the planet [1][2] and performed by -infra (bug #199788).
>
> While planet is a good medium to share ideas and get contributors, seems to
> me like we need a more official way to discuss this kind of 'global'
> ideas before make them real. Or at least drop a note on -dev-announce
> explaining the new feature and telling devs and users this is now
> officially supported.
>   
Thank you for taking the time to announce it to gentoo-dev since I 
haven't had the time with my family being here for the holidays to do 
such. I'll take care of the e-mail to gentoo-dev-announce though.
> I'm not asking for an extra overhead of 'bureaucracy' (write specs,
> mailling @dev, send to the council, etc.) but a bit more of communication 
> would be appreciated:
>   
All the above is completely unnecessary and I would be happy to discuss 
details with you off list.

> Is the feature ready to be used? Is there any kind of documentation
> (aside of DTD)? It will replace use.desc?
>   
Well the first question you answered yourself. You linked to a post I 
wrote describing live commits I made to the tree using this feature. As 
far as documentation, you will find that in your Gentoo Developer's 
Handbook [3], but most likely you'll say "But Doug, I don't see anything 
on these new changes." That's because the new changes have not been 
updated yet, again with the holiday's about it takes a little bit to get 
things done. Once the documentation is updated I had planned on sending 
an e-mail to gentoo-dev and gentoo-dev-announce.

As far as replacing use.desc, that is doubtful but a possibility of 
replacing use.local.desc is within consideration. However this would be 
in the distant future and we would have to see how the new features are 
used and evolve.
> Thanks. 
>
> [1] http://farragut.flameeyes.is-a-geek.org/articles/2007/11/24/proposing-more-use-flag-documentation
> [2] http://blog.cardoe.com/archives/2007/11/23/metadataxml-updates-examples/
>
>   
[3] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml?part=2&chap=4
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] New USE flags documentation

[Ciaran McCreesh]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1255 bytes --]

On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 10:19:55 -0500
Doug Goldstein <cardoe@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Jose Luis Rivero wrote:
> > Is the feature ready to be used? Is there any kind of documentation
> > (aside of DTD)? It will replace use.desc?
> >   
> Well the first question you answered yourself. You linked to a post I 
> wrote describing live commits I made to the tree using this feature.

...which is all very well, but have you added support to the various
programs that handle use flags for this new functionality?

Really, you should have gone for a GLEP for this -- as previous
metadata GLEPs have shown, it doesn't take long to go through the GLEP
process and it results in substantially better decisions. The proposal
as you implemented it isn't perfect -- in particular, <pkg> the way
you've done it isn't an optimal solution (think version operators and
so on -- how are they to be handled?). And what about referring to
other named USE flags, either globally or those associated with a
particular package?

Please revert the commits and go back and follow the proper process
here. Whilst it's nice to see things I suggested years ago finally
getting somewhere, it'd be better to see it done to its full potential.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] New USE flags documentation

[Jeroen Roovers]

On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 15:10:58 +0100
Thilo Bangert <bangert@gentoo.org> wrote:

> the idea is really great
> 
> [...]
> 
> now this needs to be [...] made mandatory for all ebuilds.

Uh, what?

Why? If the idea is that great, then why does it need to be mandatory?


Kind regards,
     JeR
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] New USE flags documentation

[Alec Warner]

On 11/24/07, Jose Luis Rivero <yoswink@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Hi all:
>
> I've read on the planet the recently included support to document USE
> flags in metadata. Seems like it was an idea from flameeyes and cardoe,
> discussed on the planet [1][2] and performed by -infra (bug #199788).
>
> While planet is a good medium to share ideas and get contributors, seems to
> me like we need a more official way to discuss this kind of 'global'
> ideas before make them real. Or at least drop a note on -dev-announce
> explaining the new feature and telling devs and users this is now
> officially supported.
>
> I'm not asking for an extra overhead of 'bureaucracy' (write specs,
> mailling @dev, send to the council, etc.) but a bit more of communication
> would be appreciated:

Maybe you aren't but I am.  It takes all of 20 minutes to write a
short GLEP.  It takes 5 minutes to write an e-mail telling everyone
that you are doing something new before you do it.  Thanks for
considering everyone in your changes.

>
> Is the feature ready to be used? Is there any kind of documentation
> (aside of DTD)? It will replace use.desc?
>
> Thanks.
>
> [1] http://farragut.flameeyes.is-a-geek.org/articles/2007/11/24/proposing-more-use-flag-documentation
> [2] http://blog.cardoe.com/archives/2007/11/23/metadataxml-updates-examples/
>
> --
> Jose Luis Rivero <yoswink@gentoo.org>
> Gentoo/Doc Gentoo/Alpha
>
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] New USE flags documentation

[Alec Warner]

On 11/24/07, Jose Luis Rivero <yoswink@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Hi all:
>
> I've read on the planet the recently included support to document USE
> flags in metadata. Seems like it was an idea from flameeyes and cardoe,
> discussed on the planet [1][2] and performed by -infra (bug #199788).
>
> While planet is a good medium to share ideas and get contributors, seems to
> me like we need a more official way to discuss this kind of 'global'
> ideas before make them real. Or at least drop a note on -dev-announce
> explaining the new feature and telling devs and users this is now
> officially supported.
>
> I'm not asking for an extra overhead of 'bureaucracy' (write specs,
> mailling @dev, send to the council, etc.) but a bit more of communication
> would be appreciated:

Maybe you aren't but I am.  It takes all of 20 minutes to write a
short GLEP.  It takes 5 minutes to write an e-mail telling everyone
that you are doing something new before you do it.  Thanks for
considering everyone in your changes.

>
> Is the feature ready to be used? Is there any kind of documentation
> (aside of DTD)? It will replace use.desc?
>
> Thanks.
>
> [1] http://farragut.flameeyes.is-a-geek.org/articles/2007/11/24/proposing-more-use-flag-documentation
> [2] http://blog.cardoe.com/archives/2007/11/23/metadataxml-updates-examples/
>
> --
> Jose Luis Rivero <yoswink@gentoo.org>
> Gentoo/Doc Gentoo/Alpha
>
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] New USE flags documentation

["José Luis Rivero (yoswink)"]

Jose Luis Rivero wrote:
> 
> I'm not asking for an extra overhead of 'bureaucracy' (write specs,
> mailling @dev, send to the council, etc.) but a bit more of communication 
> would be appreciated:

Seems like everyone who contact me/us about this thread is agree about 
the needed of write a GLEP before doing this kind of global changes. So 
I would like to add a couple of considerations:

1. Dear gentoo devs, in the future, please, write a GLEP for global 
changes affecting all of us and post them to -dev. This way you can get 
some feedback, improve the original idea and inform everybody about the 
new feature (all-in-one).

2. With respect to the new metadata USE flag implementation, I think 
that reverting the changes could be quite radical so my vote goes for: 
leave the thingy as it (stop adding use flags to metadata for now), 
write a quick GLEP and go through the process. When it's done, migrate 
the current data (if needed) and enjoy.

Thanks.

-- 
Jose Luis Rivero <yoswink@gentoo.org>
Gentoo/Doc Gentoo/Alpha
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] New USE flags documentation

[Alec Warner]

On 11/26/07, Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò <flameeyes@gmail.com> wrote:
> CCing council so that the other members can express their feeling about this;
> basically the only people I actually care about getting the feeling about
> this at all.
>
> On Monday 26 November 2007, you wrote:
> > Seems like everyone who contact me/us about this thread is agree about
> > the needed of write a GLEP before doing this kind of global changes.

Er, I think your statement here is wrong, as Diego pointed out ;)

>
> Everyone who contacted who? Why would people contact YOU about this thread?
> They should, if anybody, contact me and Doug, if they think we did it the
> wrong way, or the council, if they thought the proposal was to be stopped (in
> which case I would have notice, being in the council myself). Even better
> they should have opened a bug for the council to stop it.
>
> So. let's face it, the only people who agree on the need for a GLEP is Alec
> and Ciaran. The rest of the thread (which by the way I had to dig up on Gmane
> because I didn't really give a damn) is composed by Thilo who think is a
> great idea, and by Jer who answered to Thilo saying, afaics, that he doesn't
> see the reason to make it *mandatory*. Then there is Doug.

I never said I disliked your idea.  I disliked the way it was rolled
out as it sets bad precedent for future ideas, which can now use this
as an example to do random crap to the tree and not get feedback about
it until it is too late.

>
> Oh wait, everybody who contacted _me_ thinks it's a great idea, or nearly
> everybody. The difference is that people who contacted me did so in the blog,
> so you can read the comments at [1]. Yes I know they don't really count much,
> but counts more of your "everybody who contacted me/us" to me, considering  I
> see only Antarus agreeing with you.
>
> On the proper matter, whether a GLEP is needed or not, well, I already said
> before I think the GLEP process is totally broken, and I don't think that
> waiting for months to get the GLEP approved would help users at all. For what
> it's worth, there is already a GLEP on metadata extension, GLEP 5.. yes FIVE.
> Status: deferred.
>
> I think a markup change is not a problem of GLEPs, I don't think a lot of
> stuff that gone into GLEP process should have, and should just have been
> realised.
>

So to address the only real problem I have with this aside from
setting poor precedent is updating the tools that parse metadata.  If
this, as Doug alluded to in an earlier comment, begins to replace
use.local.desc then I'd like to see the tools fixed to support it.
But maybe this is just another one of those pesky process problems
where someone releases a new change over a holiday and I will wake up
tomorrow with a bug filed against gentoolkit that requests parsing
this new metadata ;)

> And as for Alec's "20 minutes" comment, I would like to remind him that we
> have a lot of people getting obnoxious when you make even a spelling mistake,
> so for a non-native English speaker like I am, the 20 minutes figure is
> totally wrong. And this is also my reason not to write GLEPs ever in my life,
> I don't want to spend two weeks just to get the spelling right. That's a
> waste of my time, and as I'm not devoting my whole life to Gentoo, it ends up
> hurting users again.

Then e-mail the glep to one of the GLEP editors (hey thats me!) and
they will fix all the grammar problems and you can focus on the
content of the thing.

>
> At any rate, if you have any comment regarding the way some dev act, I'd
> suggest you, mostly for good life of both you and the dev involved, to ask
> him BEFORE crapping on him in public. The announcement thing you referred to,
> as Doug explained, was just a time problem, and as we're all volunteer, I
> don't think Doug was forced to find the time to fix the stuff.
>
> So, as I don't really want to waste even more time on this thing that I think
> it's totally a non-issue and just a time wasting thing, I would just ask the
> opinion of the other members of the council. If they think we can proceed, I
> won't stop to add documentation that users can use; if they want to discuss
> it next meeting, I'll wait for it before doing anything; if they think it has
> to be removed and discusse, I'll comment out my metadata (I won't REMOVE
> them, users needs to have proper documentation of USE flags, so as I don't
> find it good for them to remove it, I'll remove it from the semantic of
> metadata until a new syntax could be made official - note that we NEED such
> documentation; if going through GLEP process means making this another
> deferred GLEP and thus giving up on documenting the USE flags for another
> year or two, then I'll be ready to fight the decision until devrel removes me
> from my position).

I don't think a rollback is necessary.  If necessary I will write up
the GLEP and get it approved as I'd like to have some record of the
change besides the cvs logs for the metadata.dtd (things like
rationale and thoughts on backwards compatabilty are nice to have
written down)

>
> [1]
> http://farragut.flameeyes.is-a-geek.org/articles/2007/11/19/lets-actually-get-some-metadata#comments
>
> --
> Diego "Flameeyes" Pettenò
> http://farragut.flameeyes.is-a-geek.org/
>
>
>
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] New USE flags documentation

[Ciaran McCreesh]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 992 bytes --]

On 11/26/07, Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò <flameeyes@gmail.com> wrote:
> So. let's face it, the only people who agree on the need for a GLEP
> is Alec and Ciaran. The rest of the thread (which by the way I had
> to dig up on Gmane because I didn't really give a damn) is composed
> by Thilo who think is a great idea, and by Jer who answered to
> Thilo saying, afaics, that he doesn't see the reason to make it
> *mandatory*. Then there is Doug.

Er, I don't think it's a bad idea. Heck, I suggested it several years
back. What I do think is that there are several less than ideal aspects
of the way it's proposed that could easily be fixed by someone spending
a few hours going through the GLEP process. These aren't difficult
changes, but they will substantially improve the end result.

And no, the GLEP process isn't broken. Well thought out proposals can
be approved very quickly, and the GLEP process helps iron out any
problems in the proposals.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] New USE flags documentation

[Fernando J. Pereda]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3143 bytes --]

[ I'm answering diego's mail here because I didn't get a copy of it
through gentoo-dev, I guess the list missed me or my spam filter killed
it ]

On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 07:10:40AM -0800, Alec Warner wrote:
> On 11/26/07, Diego 'Flameeyes' Pettenò <flameeyes@gmail.com> wrote:
> > CCing council so that the other members can express their feeling about this;
> > basically the only people I actually care about getting the feeling about
> > this at all.

So you do not care about the rest of the dev community... great.

> > Oh wait, everybody who contacted _me_ thinks it's a great idea, or nearly
> > everybody. The difference is that people who contacted me did so in the blog,
> > so you can read the comments at [1]. Yes I know they don't really count much,
> > but counts more of your "everybody who contacted me/us" to me, considering  I
> > see only Antarus agreeing with you.

Your proposal is no better just because people agree with you. Moreover,
it doesn't even address some of the concerns that were raised when it
was first brought up. *Brillant*.

> > On the proper matter, whether a GLEP is needed or not, well, I already said
> > before I think the GLEP process is totally broken, and I don't think that
> > waiting for months to get the GLEP approved would help users at all. For what
> > it's worth, there is already a GLEP on metadata extension, GLEP 5.. yes FIVE.
> > Status: deferred.
> >
> > I think a markup change is not a problem of GLEPs, I don't think a lot of
> > stuff that gone into GLEP process should have, and should just have been
> > realised.

This means that anobody who thinks that the 'put your favourite rule
here' rule is broken is hereby allowed to break it. Right?

> > And as for Alec's "20 minutes" comment, I would like to remind him that we
> > have a lot of people getting obnoxious when you make even a spelling mistake,
> > so for a non-native English speaker like I am, the 20 minutes figure is
> > totally wrong. And this is also my reason not to write GLEPs ever in my life,
> > I don't want to spend two weeks just to get the spelling right. That's a
> > waste of my time, and as I'm not devoting my whole life to Gentoo, it ends up
> > hurting users again.

And not caring about the whole development and user community by
bypassing its rules hurts all of us even more.

> > At any rate, if you have any comment regarding the way some dev act, I'd
> > suggest you, mostly for good life of both you and the dev involved, to ask
> > him BEFORE crapping on him in public. The announcement thing you referred to,
> > as Doug explained, was just a time problem, and as we're all volunteer, I
> > don't think Doug was forced to find the time to fix the stuff.

You are the only one that crapped yourself in public with this
completely uncalled for response.

You acted without asking the community so if people raise concerns about
how you acted, just face it. Don't play the "contact me before saying I
fucked up in public" thing.

- ferdy

-- 
Fernando J. Pereda Garcimartín
20BB BDC3 761A 4781 E6ED  ED0B 0A48 5B0C 60BD 28D4

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] New USE flags documentation

[Thilo Bangert]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 673 bytes --]

Jeroen Roovers <jer@gentoo.org> said:
> On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 15:10:58 +0100
>
> Thilo Bangert <bangert@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > the idea is really great
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > now this needs to be [...] made mandatory for all ebuilds.
>
> Uh, what?
>
> Why? If the idea is that great, then why does it need to be mandatory?

This is one more way the maintainer can document the functionality of the 
ebuild. IMHO this documentation is so usefull that every ebuild should 
provide it.

see the recent blogpost by nichoj
http://technicalpickles.com/posts/pidgin-idle-time
which supports this reasoning.

regards
Thilo

>
>
> Kind regards,
>      JeR

[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part. --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 189 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] New USE flags documentation

[Santiago M. Mola]

On Nov 24, 2007 4:19 PM, Doug Goldstein <cardoe@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Jose Luis Rivero wrote:
> > I'm not asking for an extra overhead of 'bureaucracy' (write specs,
> > mailling @dev, send to the council, etc.) but a bit more of communication
> > would be appreciated:
> >
> All the above is completely unnecessary and I would be happy to discuss
> details with you off list.

I'm not against the changes in metadata but I felt a bit angry when
the changes were made bypassing established processes and skipping the
feedback-rethinking cycle (as other people pointer out... ignoring the
community). So, I agree with people asking for freezing the use of the
new features until a GLEP is proposed, discussed and approved.

Regards,
Santiago

-- 
Santiago M. Mola
Jabber ID: cooldwind@gmail.com
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list