[gentoo-dev] Re: When is Gentoo 1.4 going to be released?

[gentoo-dev] Re: When is Gentoo 1.4 going to be released?

[3.2.3]

"Thomas T. Veldhouse" wrote:
> People are looking for a general idea of a release schedule.  I can not
> blame them for asking and I can not blame them for being frustrated when
> they don't get an answer, even if it is a ballpark figure.

i can blame them. enough software in this world is tossed over the fence
according to a schedule. i don't need any more software that was
developed to a schedule. i've got enought of that at work. i need
software that is actually ready when it is ready, whenever that is. i'm
glad there is some. eye on the ball, not somebody's stopwatch.

regards,

chris calloway

[gentoo-dev] Re: When is Gentoo 1.4 going to be released?

[3.2.3]

Stefano Peluchetti wrote:
> 
> Thomas T. Veldhouse wrote:
> > People are looking for a general idea of a release schedule.  I can not
> > blame them for asking and I can not blame them for being frustrated when
> > they don't get an answer, even if it is a ballpark figure.
> 
> I am 100% of your opinion.
> If you search in the forums you will see that also A LOT of gentoo users
>   thinks the same.

whoa right there. a lot of people are on crack, too. especially where
concerns a bunch wondering when someone is going to hurry up and give
them something for free.

enough software in this world is tossed over the fence according to a
schedule. i don't need any more software that was developed to a
schedule. i've got enought of that at work. i need software that is
actually ready when it is ready, whenever that is. i'm glad there is
some. eye on the ball, not some bean counter's stopwatch.

i don't know how realistic it is, but it seems to be expected to have a
schedule for software if someone is paying for the development. and that
causes an awful lot of crappy software to get developed. not to mention,
missed schedules anyway. a pmi study showed only 27% of software
projects meet schedule (up from 19% a decade ago). so much for software
schedules. what works for highway construction doesn't have much to do
with software.

a ballpark figure has been given more than once, and missed more than
once. i say, enough. it's plain to see there is no point in such straw
men, especially in free, volunteer, community efforts. obviously it will
be ready when it's ready. and only when it's ready should i want it. -i
wouldn't have it any other way!- in certain circumstances i would expect
to hear, "are we there yet?" from the backseat. this is not one of them.

> In fact the status of the development is covered by an incredible mistery...

that is so untrue. bugs.gentoo.org. it's completely transparent.

regards,

chris calloway

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: When is Gentoo 1.4 going to be released?

[Matt Beland]

On Tue, Oct 22, 2002 at 02:21:09PM -0400, 3.2.3 wrote:
> whoa right there. a lot of people are on crack, too. especially where
> concerns a bunch wondering when someone is going to hurry up and give
> them something for free.
 
Wrong. We're not asking for the Gentoo team to hurry up and give us our
free candy. We want the Gentoo team to let us know when they're going to
let us take full advantage of the portage system again. Frankly, I (and
I suspect most others) could care less about the 1.4 release in and of
itself. Sure, a new version of the compiler and so on would be nice, but
I can get that on my own if necessary. The problem is that the portage
tree is frozen waiting for 1.4, and has been for some time.

Do a 'grep freeze /usr/portage/profiles/package.mask' sometime. That's
probably an inaccurate count - on the low side - and I see 14 ebuilds
that are masked waiting for the freeze to be over. How many others are
not even in the tree? I see a number of the "freeze" comments indicating
they were only added to the tree for bugfix testing or because the new
build fixes a major bug.
 
> enough software in this world is tossed over the fence according to a
> schedule. i don't need any more software that was developed to a
> schedule. i've got enought of that at work. i need software that is
> actually ready when it is ready, whenever that is. i'm glad there is
> some. eye on the ball, not some bean counter's stopwatch.

Well, see, here's the thing - that's not what we're asking for. We can't
really participate in the internal development - the bugs are available,
but we don't know what's being done about them. We don't know if our
work would be a duplication of effort, or a wrong track, or not really
useful. So we *can't* help fix the problems. At the same time, we get no
communication on how things are progressing - are we getting close? Is
it months away? Has the entire development team gone on vacation? 

I need software that's "actually ready when it is ready" too. So when
I'm dealing with an Open Source software distribution, I have to wonder
why releases are so far apart and include so little community
communication and involvement.

-- 
Matt Beland
matt@rearviewmirror.org
http://www.rearviewmirror.org

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: When is Gentoo 1.4 going to be released?

[Tom Syroid]

Hi Matt ;-) long time, no chat.

--On Tuesday, October 22, 2002 12:15:49 -0700 Matt Beland 
<matt@rearviewmirror.org> wrote:

> We want the Gentoo team to let us know when they're going to
> let us take full advantage of the portage system again. Frankly, I (and
> I suspect most others) could care less about the 1.4 release in and of
> itself. Sure, a new version of the compiler and so on would be nice, but
> I can get that on my own if necessary. The problem is that the portage
> tree is frozen waiting for 1.4, and has been for some time.

Without trying to be contentious here (in other words, simple honest 
question)...

I know you well enough that I can safely say you're not about to go off 
using a new version of something on any kind of critcal box without testing 
it first. So on the assumption that you have already discerned 
program/tool/system utility is "ready for prime time", what's wrong with 
simply edited the "frozen" entry in package.mask and installing it?

While I concur that the Gentoo development team as a whole could do a 
better job of communicating TODO's and loose timelines to the community, I 
don't see how a frozen Portage tree is preventing you from utilizing the 
distribution in any way you heart desires.

Best,
/tom

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: When is Gentoo 1.4 going to be released?

[Matt Beland]

On Tue, Oct 22, 2002 at 01:43:35PM -0600, Tom Syroid wrote:
> I know you well enough that I can safely say you're not about to go off 
> using a new version of something on any kind of critcal box without testing 
> it first. So on the assumption that you have already discerned 
> program/tool/system utility is "ready for prime time", what's wrong with 
> simply edited the "frozen" entry in package.mask and installing it?

There's nothing wrong with doing that, for myself, other than the
annoying need to push out modified package.mask files to my systems
after an 'emerge rsync'. (Well, and the security policy here at work
doesn't allow for "unsupported" external packages, which our security
team considers masked packages to be - but what they don't know won't
hurt 'em.) 

But there are a couple of other problems. First and foremost, not every
package held up by the freeze is in the portage tree and masked; I know
of at least a few others that I use which are currently "out of date"
because of the freeze. Sure, I could make ebuilds on my own - I have, in
a couple of cases. 

Second, for me it's no big deal to edit the package.mask file or create
custom ebuilds. Is that true of everybody? Is it even true of the
majority, considering the general user population? I know from observing
my local LUG that people start complaining when RedHat RPMs aren't
immediately available for the latest cool software release - is the
Gentoo community that much more forgiving?

Finally, this doesn't answer my real question - why don't we know the
answer to the question "how are the preparations for the release of 1.4
going?" Why are we not getting any communication from the development
team? For that matter, why is there an ebuild freeze at all? If the
portage tree weren't frozen, would we even care how long it took to
release 1.4?
 
> While I concur that the Gentoo development team as a whole could do a 
> better job of communicating TODO's and loose timelines to the community, I 
> don't see how a frozen Portage tree is preventing you from utilizing the 
> distribution in any way you heart desires.

It's an inconvenience, not a barrier. My point was that we're not
complaining about not getting "something free" on the schedule we
demand. I don't need to use Gentoo at all; I could use FreeBSD, or 
stick with Debian or RedHat or any of a dozen other distributions, or go
with a complete Linux-From-Scratch system. Gentoo is a convenience, a
useful method of eliminating some of the work while still getting a
system which does what I want. If the development team doesn't 
communicate TODOs and timelines and expectations, if they don't
make use of their user community to help make the distribution better,
the utility and convenience of using Gentoo is decreased as a result.

Which is the real problem here - without the rapid updates and
community-contributed ebuilds, Gentoo is not as useful as a
distribution.

-- 
Matt Beland
matt@rearviewmirror.org
http://www.rearviewmirror.org

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: When is Gentoo 1.4 going to be released?

[Stefano Peluchetti]

> whoa right there. a lot of people are on crack, too. especially where
> concerns a bunch wondering when someone is going to hurry up and give
> them something for free.
> 
> enough software in this world is tossed over the fence according to a
> schedule. i don't need any more software that was developed to a
> schedule. i've got enought of that at work. i need software that is
> actually ready when it is ready, whenever that is. i'm glad there is
> some. eye on the ball, not some bean counter's stopwatch.
> 
> i don't know how realistic it is, but it seems to be expected to have a
> schedule for software if someone is paying for the development. and that
> causes an awful lot of crappy software to get developed. not to mention,
> missed schedules anyway. a pmi study showed only 27% of software
> projects meet schedule (up from 19% a decade ago). so much for software
> schedules. what works for highway construction doesn't have much to do
> with software.
> 
> a ballpark figure has been given more than once, and missed more than
> once. i say, enough. it's plain to see there is no point in such straw
> men, especially in free, volunteer, community efforts. obviously it will
> be ready when it's ready. and only when it's ready should i want it. -i
> wouldn't have it any other way!- in certain circumstances i would expect
> to hear, "are we there yet?" from the backseat. this is not one of them.

But i have not told the developers to hurry! I'm sure that it's better 
to wait until the work is finished that have a bugged or incomplete product.
I'm only sayng that have developers giving a feedback once a week about 
what was done and what todo (even 4 rows of plain text could do the 
work!) should be nice.
And i don't need a schedule with calendar! Only what is done and what not.


>>In fact the status of the development is covered by an incredible mistery...
> 
> 
> that is so untrue. bugs.gentoo.org. it's completely transparent.

But doesn't give a complete view of the status of the development.

Pelux

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: When is Gentoo 1.4 going to be released?

[Thomas T. Veldhouse]

You miss the fact that MANY new ports have not been added to the tree, but
have been marked as LATER instead.  Marked out right and not even reviewed.

OH -- for you chess players out there, I have created a port for SCID that
is waiting in the queue -- and I created it for the stable 3.3 version, not
the beta (coming soon). http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9391

Tom Veldhouse

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Syroid" <tom@syroidmanor.com>
To: "Matt Beland" <matt@rearviewmirror.org>; <gentoo-dev@gentoo.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 2:43 PM
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: When is Gentoo 1.4 going to be released?


> Hi Matt ;-) long time, no chat.
>
> --On Tuesday, October 22, 2002 12:15:49 -0700 Matt Beland
> <matt@rearviewmirror.org> wrote:
>
> > We want the Gentoo team to let us know when they're going to
> > let us take full advantage of the portage system again. Frankly, I (and
> > I suspect most others) could care less about the 1.4 release in and of
> > itself. Sure, a new version of the compiler and so on would be nice, but
> > I can get that on my own if necessary. The problem is that the portage
> > tree is frozen waiting for 1.4, and has been for some time.
>
> Without trying to be contentious here (in other words, simple honest
> question)...
>
> I know you well enough that I can safely say you're not about to go off
> using a new version of something on any kind of critcal box without
testing
> it first. So on the assumption that you have already discerned
> program/tool/system utility is "ready for prime time", what's wrong with
> simply edited the "frozen" entry in package.mask and installing it?
>
> While I concur that the Gentoo development team as a whole could do a
> better job of communicating TODO's and loose timelines to the community, I
> don't see how a frozen Portage tree is preventing you from utilizing the
> distribution in any way you heart desires.
>
> Best,
> /tom
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> gentoo-dev mailing list
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
> http://lists.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev
>

[gentoo-dev] Re: When is Gentoo 1.4 going to be released?

[Thomas T. Veldhouse]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 746 bytes --]

Nobody suggested tossing "software over the fence".  I thought I had made
myself pretty clear on that..

Tom Veldhouse


>"Thomas T. Veldhouse" wrote:
>> People are looking for a general idea of a release schedule.  I can not
>> blame them for asking and I can not blame them for being frustrated when
>> they don't get an answer, even if it is a ballpark figure.

"3.2.3" wrote:
i can blame them. enough software in this world is tossed over the fence
according to a schedule. i don't need any more software that was
developed to a schedule. i've got enought of that at work. i need
software that is actually ready when it is ready, whenever that is. i'm
glad there is some. eye on the ball, not somebody's stopwatch.

regards,

chris calloway


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: When is Gentoo 1.4 going to be released?

[Thomas M. Beaudry]

You did and so did others.  He's trying to turn a mess created by
Daniel's fair-haired boys' lack of communication into a bigger mess.
The short version:  he's a troll.


Thomas T. Veldhouse wrote:
> Nobody suggested tossing "software over the fence".  I thought I had made
> myself pretty clear on that..
> 
> Tom Veldhouse
> 
> 
> 
>>"Thomas T. Veldhouse" wrote:
>>
>>>People are looking for a general idea of a release schedule.  I can not
>>>blame them for asking and I can not blame them for being frustrated when
>>>they don't get an answer, even if it is a ballpark figure.
>>
> 
> "3.2.3" wrote:
> i can blame them. enough software in this world is tossed over the fence
> according to a schedule. i don't need any more software that was
> developed to a schedule. i've got enought of that at work. i need
> software that is actually ready when it is ready, whenever that is. i'm
> glad there is some. eye on the ball, not somebody's stopwatch.
> 
> regards,
> 
> chris calloway
> 

-- 
Thomas M. Beaudry
k8la / ys1ztm