Re: [gentoo-dev] Last rites: app-text/cuneiform

[Peter Stuge <peter@stuge.se>]

Alan McKinnon wrote:
> Masking already accomplishes everything you propose, which is to
> communicate "there is something wrong with this package and it is in
> danger of leaving the tree. To get it out of this state, you need to
> take action".

I disagree strongly that this is what masking communicates,
specifically the words "is in danger of leaving."

Masking is the result of a developer decision and is something users
are unable to influence, because the decision has already been made.

When the decision has been made the package isn't in danger of
leaving the tree anymore, it has been decided that the package *will*
leave the tree. I consider the difference to be significant.


The way I see it, every ebuild is in danger of leaving the tree.

Masking is the next step, and means that a developer has decided that
now (soon) is the time for that package to go.

As Rich mentioned, sometimes this happens too quickly or on wrong
grounds. Most of the time not, but the sometimes is still a problem,
and in general I think it would be cool to make bugs more visible.

I think there are other Gentoo users like myself, who are able to fix
broken things that they care about. We don't use bugzilla unless we
are reporting bugs however, because since fixes don't go into portage
anyway there is little motivation.

I fix what I need for myself and push fixes into my overlay, and
usually I document both bugs and their fixes in bugzilla. The common
case, in my experience, is that *nothing* further happens.

Bugzilla is very much write-only for us users, but at the same time
it has valuable information for upstream, and I think the bug metric
would be a good way to push knowledge in bugzilla onto users, so that
we can engage upstream early and make a difference for Gentoo without
first needing to play through the recruitment game.


//Peter