Recruiting process (Re: [gentoo-dev] base-system needs developers who care)

Recruiting process (Re: [gentoo-dev] base-system needs developers who care)

[Raymond Jennings]

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On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 4:17 PM, Robin H. Johnson <robbat2@gentoo.org>
wrote:

> Over the years, the base-system package herd has grown in size. Today
> it comprises 320 packages, of which 61 of those have more than one
> maintainer. The packages with more than one maintainer I'm only
> concerned about if the other maintainer is also very busy or not
> available.
>
> Some of these packages are very niche, and while they continue to work,
> they could use a bit more attention than they get presently (you might
> only hear about them when they break and never when they work).
>
> They are generally NOT broken and in need of tree-cleaning, but are just
> lacking forward momentum (not a few bugs are reasonable upstream bugs or
> feature improvements). Many were once shiny and had lots of people that
> cared, but that dwindled as they become mundane and just expected to
> work.
>
> General increase in the number of developers in base-system would not be
> a bad outcome from this email either ;-).
>

This...kinda touches on a side issue.  I've been a bit waylaid by RL issues
during my quest to become a developer myself, and both of my prospective
mentors had to step aside for the same reason before the process could
finish.

I'm a little slow on the quizzes and some recent changes in gentoo
invalidated some of my answers, so part of it is my fault for falling
behind.

But I was kinda wondering, is there anything that can be done to beef up
the manpower?  Is there any need to?

>
> Some of this is from stuff I know needs eyeballs, and others are where
> the package seems to have more than a few old bugs open.
>
> Packages in need of review & tweaks or just more eyeballs
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> app-admin/sudo (upstream?)
> app-admin/sysklogd- (upstream?)
> app-shells/bash (upstream?)
> dev-util/strace (upstream?)
> net-dialup/ppp
> net-firewall/iptables
> net-fs/nfs-utils (upstream?)
> net-misc/dhcpcd (upstream?)
> net-misc/dhcp (upstream?)
> net-misc/ntp (upstream?)
> net-misc/openssh
> net-nds/rpcbind
> sys-apps/baselayout
> sys-apps/coreutils (upstream?)
> sys-apps/kbd (upstream?)
> sys-block/aoetools
> sys-block/iscsitarget
> sys-block/open-iscsi
> sys-block/thin-provisioning-tools
> sys-block/vblade
> sys-fs/lvm2 (mostly in regards to genkernel interaction)
> sys-fs/multipath-tools
> sys-fs/quota
>
> --
> Robin Hugh Johnson
> Gentoo Linux: Dev, Infra Lead, Foundation Trustee & Treasurer
> E-Mail   : robbat2@gentoo.org
> GnuPG FP : 11ACBA4F 4778E3F6 E4EDF38E B27B944E 34884E85
> GnuPG FP : 7D0B3CEB E9B85B1F 825BCECF EE05E6F6 A48F6136
>

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Re: Recruiting process (Re: [gentoo-dev] base-system needs developers who care)

[Daniel Campbell]

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On 08/24/2016 08:24 PM, Raymond Jennings wrote:
> This...kinda touches on a side issue.  I've been a bit waylaid by RL
> issues during my quest to become a developer myself, and both of my
> prospective mentors had to step aside for the same reason before the
> process could finish.
> 
> I'm a little slow on the quizzes and some recent changes in gentoo
> invalidated some of my answers, so part of it is my fault for falling
> behind.
> 
> But I was kinda wondering, is there anything that can be done to beef up
> the manpower?  Is there any need to?

(snipped HTML quote; stick to plaintext please)

The situation you described isn't that uncommon in Gentoo. We're a bit
smaller than we used to be, but I've also noticed that more people are
being brought on than they were when I first started using Gentoo in
2012 and even near the time I was accepted as a developer.

Being a recruiter and/or mentor is no small task. You need to be
extremely comfortable talking about the nitty gritty of ebuilds and a
strong grasp of the PMS would be even better. Absorbing that information
takes time, and I wonder if despite the new blood we've been getting,
some knowledge isn't being passed down as well as it maybe should be.

Given that so much needs to be learned and a lot of trust goes into
developers, it's no surprise that we tend to take our time accepting
people. That said, I chalk it up to a manpower problem. As far as I know
the recruiting and proxy-maint teams are dedicated, but small. They do
an awesome job (that I am not cut out for) so they deserve a lot of
respect. But it does indeed seem that scheduling and workloads are not
in sync.
-- 
Daniel Campbell - Gentoo Developer
OpenPGP Key: 0x1EA055D6 @ hkp://keys.gnupg.net
fpr: AE03 9064 AE00 053C 270C  1DE4 6F7A 9091 1EA0 55D6


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Re: Recruiting process (Re: [gentoo-dev] base-system needs developers who care)

[Kristian Fiskerstrand]

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On 08/25/2016 11:59 AM, Daniel Campbell wrote:
> Given that so much needs to be learned and a lot of trust goes into
> developers, it's no surprise that we tend to take our time accepting
> people. That said, I chalk it up to a manpower problem. As far as I know
> the recruiting and proxy-maint teams are dedicated, but small. They do
> an awesome job (that I am not cut out for) so they deserve a lot of
> respect. But it does indeed seem that scheduling and workloads are not
> in sync.

Just to add an agreement to this; picking up some packages in
maintainer-needed and maintaining it through proxy-maint for a while is
a good way to get introduced to workflow and getting reviewed while
learning the steps.

-- 
Kristian Fiskerstrand
OpenPGP certificate reachable at hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net
fpr:94CB AFDD 3034 5109 5618 35AA 0B7F 8B60 E3ED FAE3


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