Re: [gentoo-dev] [Summary] tentative x86 arch team glep

[Ed W <lists@wildgooses.com>]

>| Is there any possibility that easier low quality contribution makes
>| the high quality contributions easier?
>
>Only to the extent that they get me to write better documentation :)
>
>| Look at wikipedia - it's amazing that such high quality work (in 
>| general) can come from lightly peer review material with low barriers
>| to entry.
>|
>| Clearly not an appropriate model here, but I can't help wondering if 
>| there is not another way...
>
>Well... Sometimes maintainer-wanted ebuilds are worked upon by multiple
>people. It happens, but not very often.
>  
>

I was pondering this last night.

Whilst there is clearly no substitute for a high quality standard for 
"x86", etc, it seems to me that we are missing a trick with all the 
"maintainer wanted" ebuilds which tend to be scattered around the web. 

It seems to me that perhaps it would be useful to have a centralised 
development area where stuff can "gestate" before making it into the 
testing pool that we have today.  It could be argued that this exists 
and is called bugzilla, but I wonder if we can do better?

What about adding another layer (or two) to the flags so that 
development ebuilds can be developed centrally to gentoo and hence 
available in portage, but lowering the barrier to entry.  At the 
simplest this could be used to allow a non core developer to bump an 
ebuild to a new version in response to some release.  It goes into the 
"highly unstable" section which shouldn't be seen by any normal person, 
yet at the same time makes it available to the kiddies who like to test 
the latest and greatest.

Now, the follow on to this idea is as follows: It seems to me to be a 
little arbitrary when something goes stable and I find myself with a 
number of "~" flags set on an otherwise fairly stable system (I dare say 
you have a different opinion, but remember I am looking from the outside 
in).

Now, at one point in the past there was a gentoo package which phoned 
home and reported which version of every package you were using.  Could 
these statistics not be used to help direct development time to the most 
useful areas?  I'm thinking along the lines of noticing that 90% of the 
userbase is running a version of xmltv which is 5 versions newer than 
the stable one, hence it's probably fairly stable, and in need up being 
marked as stable...

These statistics could also be used as a first line quality check for 
any ebuilds in the proposed "development" ebuild area.  So for example, 
if there is a hard-core of users using my "pmwiki" ebuild (which is 
currently marked as "maintainer wanted"), then this is a clue that it 
must be fairly stable and popular and worth including (since it will 
probably require minimal effort).

It seems like this would go some way towards easing the "easy 
development" bits and giving everyone more time to work on the important 
stuff, whilst also making use of the distributed testing effort of some 
of the more adventurous users...

Workable?

Ed W
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