[gentoo-dev] Usefulness of HOMEPAGE=https://www.gentoo.org

[gentoo-dev] Usefulness of HOMEPAGE=https://www.gentoo.org

[Michał Górny]

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Hi,

Many of Gentoo-originating packages are listing the main Gentoo site
as HOMEPAGE.  In my opinion, this is suboptimal (not to say 'useless').

I can think of a few uses for HOMEPAGE:

1. providing additional information about the package (before the user
chooses it),

2. providing easy access to (additional) documentation,

3. providing easy access to package sources,

4. providing easy access to bug reporting,

5. providing easy access to downloads.

A good HOMEPAGE is dedicated to the package in question, and makes it
easy to find all the stuff (and all other stuff the user might need).
The more effort user needs to put into finding what he needs, the worse
HOMEPAGE is.

Now, if I consider gentoo.org as a HOMEPAGE for ~90 packages it
currently is, it's horribly bad.  I suppose that in some cases authors
meant to indicate that Gentoo is the package's upstream.  However, by
going to the main Gentoo site, it's *very hard* to find anything about
the package in question.

Just please select a totally random package from those listing
gentoo.org as HOMEPAGE, then go to gentoo.org and try to find either
of the points listed above.  If you click 'Downloads', you're certainly
not going to find anything relevant.  Through 'Support', you may
eventually find that tiny Bugzilla button at the bottom... and then try
to find the correct Product.  You may also find gitweb link somewhere,
and try to see if the project has a repo there.  Or maybe it's somewhere
else, or maybe it existed on somebody's devspace once.

My point is: gentoo.org as a HOMEPAGE sucks.  Please use something more
specific instead.  Even link to gitweb would be more helpful because it
would at least be relevant to the package in question.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny


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[gentoo-dev] Re: HOMEPAGE and DESCRIPTION in ebuilds? (was: Usefulness of HOMEPAGE=https://www.gentoo.org)

[Miroslav Šulc]

hi,

it's proly little bit off this topic, but why do we have to copy 
homepage and description from ebuild to ebuild? wouldn't it be better to 
move this information to metadata.xml and keep it just there? or does in 
reality one package really have various homepages and various 
descriptions for different versions? metadata.xml could also contain 
more structured data like you outlined, i.e. link to homepage, 
sources/repository, bug tracker and possibly other.

miroslav

Dne 04. 12. 19 v 13:36 Michał Górny napsal(a):
> Hi,
>
> Many of Gentoo-originating packages are listing the main Gentoo site
> as HOMEPAGE.  In my opinion, this is suboptimal (not to say 'useless').
>
> I can think of a few uses for HOMEPAGE:
>
> 1. providing additional information about the package (before the user
> chooses it),
>
> 2. providing easy access to (additional) documentation,
>
> 3. providing easy access to package sources,
>
> 4. providing easy access to bug reporting,
>
> 5. providing easy access to downloads.
>
> A good HOMEPAGE is dedicated to the package in question, and makes it
> easy to find all the stuff (and all other stuff the user might need).
> The more effort user needs to put into finding what he needs, the worse
> HOMEPAGE is.
>
> Now, if I consider gentoo.org as a HOMEPAGE for ~90 packages it
> currently is, it's horribly bad.  I suppose that in some cases authors
> meant to indicate that Gentoo is the package's upstream.  However, by
> going to the main Gentoo site, it's *very hard* to find anything about
> the package in question.
>
> Just please select a totally random package from those listing
> gentoo.org as HOMEPAGE, then go to gentoo.org and try to find either
> of the points listed above.  If you click 'Downloads', you're certainly
> not going to find anything relevant.  Through 'Support', you may
> eventually find that tiny Bugzilla button at the bottom... and then try
> to find the correct Product.  You may also find gitweb link somewhere,
> and try to see if the project has a repo there.  Or maybe it's somewhere
> else, or maybe it existed on somebody's devspace once.
>
> My point is: gentoo.org as a HOMEPAGE sucks.  Please use something more
> specific instead.  Even link to gitweb would be more helpful because it
> would at least be relevant to the package in question.
>

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: HOMEPAGE and DESCRIPTION in ebuilds? (was: Usefulness of HOMEPAGE=https://www.gentoo.org)

[Michał Górny]

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On Wed, 2019-12-04 at 13:44 +0100, Miroslav Šulc wrote:
> hi,
> 
> it's proly little bit off this topic, but why do we have to copy 
> homepage and description from ebuild to ebuild? wouldn't it be better to 
> move this information to metadata.xml and keep it just there? or does in 
> reality one package really have various homepages and various 
> descriptions for different versions? metadata.xml could also contain 
> more structured data like you outlined, i.e. link to homepage, 
> sources/repository, bug tracker and possibly other.
> 

Inertia.  It's been proposed years ago, never moved forward.
The relevant bug is here:

https://bugs.gentoo.org/186454

If you want to discuss it further, please do it on the bug (even though
it's closed).

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Usefulness of HOMEPAGE=https://www.gentoo.org

[Michał Górny]

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On Wed, 2019-12-04 at 13:36 +0100, Michał Górny wrote:
> My point is: gentoo.org as a HOMEPAGE sucks.  Please use something more
> specific instead.  Even link to gitweb would be more helpful because it
> would at least be relevant to the package in question.

I've forgot to mention one thing: if you really don't have a proper
homepage, then we have the special value of:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/No_homepage

which is generally better than gentoo.org in the regard that it
explicitly defines the problem.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: HOMEPAGE and DESCRIPTION in ebuilds? (was: Usefulness of HOMEPAGE=https://www.gentoo.org)

[Kent Fredric]

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On Wed, 4 Dec 2019 13:44:22 +0100
Miroslav Šulc <fordfrog@gentoo.org> wrote:

> it's proly little bit off this topic, but why do we have to copy 
> homepage and description from ebuild to ebuild? wouldn't it be better to 
> move this information to metadata.xml and keep it just there? or does in 
> reality one package really have various homepages and various 
> descriptions for different versions? metadata.xml could also contain 
> more structured data like you outlined, i.e. link to homepage, 
> sources/repository, bug tracker and possibly other.

Also, widespread in usage in dev-perl/, the homepage can be reasonably
defaulted, and so, 99% of ebuilds there have a HOMEPAGE value
conjugated from ${PN}

Can't reasonably do that in metadata.xml

So any proposal that involves metadata.xml must allow for it being an
auxiliary to the value in the ebuild

( ie: if there is a HOMEPAGE in the ebuild, it should take precedence
over reading metadata.xml )

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Usefulness of HOMEPAGE=https://www.gentoo.org

[Kent Fredric]

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On Wed, 04 Dec 2019 13:36:07 +0100
Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:

> My point is: gentoo.org as a HOMEPAGE sucks.  Please use something more
> specific instead.  Even link to gitweb would be more helpful because it
> would at least be relevant to the package in question.

I agree so much I would support the addition of a QA check for this.

A page on wiki.gentoo.org would be in every way superior if there's no
other good alternative.


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Usefulness of HOMEPAGE=https://www.gentoo.org

[Joonas Niilola]

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On 12/4/19 5:21 PM, Kent Fredric wrote:
> On Wed, 04 Dec 2019 13:36:07 +0100
> Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
>> My point is: gentoo.org as a HOMEPAGE sucks.  Please use something more
>> specific instead.  Even link to gitweb would be more helpful because it
>> would at least be relevant to the package in question.
> I agree so much I would support the addition of a QA check for this.
>
I take it you haven't checked the CI results lately? Reaction to that
probably spawned this ML thread.

https://qa-reports.gentoo.org/output/gentoo-ci/output.html



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Re: [gentoo-dev] Usefulness of HOMEPAGE=https://www.gentoo.org

[Kent Fredric]

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On Wed, 4 Dec 2019 17:24:54 +0200
Joonas Niilola <juippis@gentoo.org> wrote:

> I take it you haven't checked the CI results lately? Reaction to that
> probably spawned this ML thread.

In that case, good work :)

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Usefulness of HOMEPAGE=https://www.gentoo.org

[Michał Górny]

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On Wed, 2019-12-04 at 17:24 +0200, Joonas Niilola wrote:
> On 12/4/19 5:21 PM, Kent Fredric wrote:
> > On Wed, 04 Dec 2019 13:36:07 +0100
> > Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > My point is: gentoo.org as a HOMEPAGE sucks.  Please use something more
> > > specific instead.  Even link to gitweb would be more helpful because it
> > > would at least be relevant to the package in question.
> > I agree so much I would support the addition of a QA check for this.
> > 
> I take it you haven't checked the CI results lately? Reaction to that
> probably spawned this ML thread.
> 
> https://qa-reports.gentoo.org/output/gentoo-ci/output.html

Actually, I've requested that check.  However, I didn't expect that many
packages to be affected.

Given that it's open season on me lately, and apparently people feel
offended when bugs are reported for their packages, I've decided to
start by trying to make people realize the problem globally first.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Usefulness of HOMEPAGE=https://www.gentoo.org

[Joonas Niilola]

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On 12/4/19 7:26 PM, Michał Górny wrote:
> On Wed, 2019-12-04 at 17:24 +0200, Joonas Niilola wrote:
>> On 12/4/19 5:21 PM, Kent Fredric wrote:
>>> On Wed, 04 Dec 2019 13:36:07 +0100
>>> Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> My point is: gentoo.org as a HOMEPAGE sucks.  Please use something more
>>>> specific instead.  Even link to gitweb would be more helpful because it
>>>> would at least be relevant to the package in question.
>>> I agree so much I would support the addition of a QA check for this.
>>>
>> I take it you haven't checked the CI results lately? Reaction to that
>> probably spawned this ML thread.
>>
>> https://qa-reports.gentoo.org/output/gentoo-ci/output.html
> Actually, I've requested that check.  However, I didn't expect that many
> packages to be affected.
>
> Given that it's open season on me lately, and apparently people feel
> offended when bugs are reported for their packages, I've decided to
> start by trying to make people realize the problem globally first.

That's a nice initiatitve. Overall I feel like (global) future CI checks
should be discussed first, because they affect everyone who's
committing, and it feels weird starting to suddenly receive mails about
things you've pushed a hundred times before. As seen by the evergrowing
list of new warnings, people just start to ignore these new checks or
"fix it on next version bump", because knowledge wasn't there on a
previous one.

-- juippis



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Re: [gentoo-dev] Usefulness of HOMEPAGE=https://www.gentoo.org

[Alec Warner]

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On Wed, Dec 4, 2019 at 9:26 AM Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Wed, 2019-12-04 at 17:24 +0200, Joonas Niilola wrote:
> > On 12/4/19 5:21 PM, Kent Fredric wrote:
> > > On Wed, 04 Dec 2019 13:36:07 +0100
> > > Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > > My point is: gentoo.org as a HOMEPAGE sucks.  Please use something
> more
> > > > specific instead.  Even link to gitweb would be more helpful because
> it
> > > > would at least be relevant to the package in question.
> > > I agree so much I would support the addition of a QA check for this.
> > >
> > I take it you haven't checked the CI results lately? Reaction to that
> > probably spawned this ML thread.
> >
> > https://qa-reports.gentoo.org/output/gentoo-ci/output.html
>
> Actually, I've requested that check.  However, I didn't expect that many
> packages to be affected.
>
> Given that it's open season on me lately, and apparently people feel
> offended when bugs are reported for their packages, I've decided to
> start by trying to make people realize the problem globally first.
>

When QA was run by Diego, he suffered some of the same problems. A lot of
this comes down to three factors (IMHO.)

 - Lack of buy-in from developers. When you add a QA thing, you are asking
people to do more work. If they don't agree with the work, they have no
real incentive to do it. I don't see a lot of incentive building here and
so for some efforts adoption of fixes is slow / low. In addition,
expectations are often not set (at all[1]) or not shared with the group
(e.g. QA and the community disagree on the expectation; often in relation
to timelines or end goals.)
 - The above leads to the stick instead of the carrot. Instead of helping
people adhere to the policy and recruiting the community to do the work, QA
takes an adversarial approach where the policy is wielded as a cudgel to
'force' people to do the work. This then leads to the comments like the
above (e.g. "its open season on mgorny") because often forcing people to do
work on a tight timetable does not generate trust or goodwill and
encourages the adversarial relationship between the community and QA.
 - This perception that perfection is required and imperfect packages are
ripe for removal. This again creates this air of anxiety between a package
maintainer and QA where QA can basically invent new reasons to mask
arbitrary[0] packages.

-A

[0] I'm not suggesting this is the intent of the QA team, but it's one
narrative that a non-QA member might have and the QA team is fairly
adversarial and often takes little action to dissuade this narrative from
taking hold.
[1] Some good examples are things like EAPI deprecation
https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/aef37db23c862865fffdd24071fce1ec.
You notice that Andreas has articulated some goal (no more EAPI2), has
clearly specified the packages that need work, and has encouraged people to
help achieve the goal. Even the tone is positive. I want to help! This is
different from messaging like "Hey you have 7 days to fix your
EAPI2 packages or I will mask them!". This may encourage me to save my
packages (from the evil QA team) but it doesn't make me love the QA team at
all; it makes me feel negative feelings.


> --
> Best regards,
> Michał Górny
>
>

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