From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1NymVO-0004B4-LY for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:38:18 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 2D1F6E0A6E; Mon, 5 Apr 2010 13:38:16 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (smtp.gentoo.org [140.211.166.183]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A0400E0A60 for ; Mon, 5 Apr 2010 13:38:10 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [192.168.0.5] (pool-96-245-231-248.phlapa.fios.verizon.net [96.245.231.248]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 09BBE1B4005 for ; Mon, 5 Apr 2010 13:38:09 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: <4BB9E7BF.40003@gentoo.org> Date: Mon, 05 Apr 2010 09:38:07 -0400 From: Richard Freeman User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100306 Thunderbird/3.0.3 Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] [Gentoo Phoenix] recruitment process References: <4BB93E00.3070301@gentoo.org> <20100405084808.2fadb906@snowmobile> In-Reply-To: <20100405084808.2fadb906@snowmobile> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archives-Salt: 99b3e42f-fbb6-47e4-aee3-a2dde2684996 X-Archives-Hash: bba1a05077104dd2f5e490fe2c3b6a22 On 04/05/2010 03:48 AM, Ciaran McCreesh wrote: > On Mon, 05 Apr 2010 03:33:52 +0200 > Tobias Heinlein wrote: >> 3) Questions that aren't that important at all and would just be "nice >> to know". >> [snip] >> Examples for these: >> >> 5. What is wrong with using $(somecommand) or `somecommand` or $ARCH >> inside SRC_URI, DEPEND, etc? >> [Devmanual, Caching] > > How the heck is this not important? Anyone who doesn't immediately know > the answer to this has absolutely no business touching any ebuild that > might end up being given to someone else. > My concern with these kinds of questions is that there really isn't any page where we have key gotchas consolidated like "don't execute external programs in global scope." Sure, it is in the devmanual, and if you read the whole thing then maybe you might remember that one bit in particular. I agree that somebody who doesn't know this particular fact shouldn't be committing ebuilds. My concern is that we don't really have any way to make people aware of that particular fact. Honestly, I think it would be just as effective to simply write up a single webpage with thou shalt not's, and not make people go hunting all over the place to figure out the whys. By all means have a link on each thou shalt not to the reason. There are lots of people who would be perfectly capable of doing many developer activities who might not come in knowing about the metadata cache. They don't need to know the nuts and bolts of how it works, just what they need to do to avoid problems with it. In any case, giving hints as to the location of the answer in this kind of a question seems fine to me. The important thing is that the candidate dev learn about the potential problem - not that they figure it out 100% on their own. Still, the socratic method is a good approach to teaching, so I'm not opposed to the Q&A format of the quiz in general. We just need to let candidates know that we're there to help them succeed and the quiz is a tool - the goal isn't to eliminate any potential contributor who doesn't come to the table knowing as much about Gentoo as any seasoned dev. Rich