Re: [gentoo-dev] Becoming a Gentoo developer?

[hasufell <hasufell@gentoo.org>]

On 04/15/2015 03:02 PM, Peter Stuge wrote:
> Yanestra wrote:
>
>> Many secrets,
> 
> Something is only a secret if there is intent to keep it secret.
> I agree that the various Gentoo structures and the overhead is not
> well-documented in a very accessible manner. There are good and bad
> mostly historical but partly also legal reasons for the overhead, but
> I strongly disagree that there would be any intent to keep any part
> of the structures and overhead secret.
> 

Some of the technology used in gentoo is in fact secret. Overall, the
tree or the documentation about PMS, portage and how to write ebuilds is
not secret.
Whether this collides with our social contract... well, decide for yourself.

> 
>> inaugurations,
> 
> That's the becoming-a-developer-threshold, which I find too high to
> be worth my time, but in my overlay, which is easily installable using
> the layman tool, I can still contribute to the Gentoo ecosystem.
> 

High-quality overlays are the easiest way to contribute. I don't think
users should really have to care when or how an ebuild reaches the CVS
gentoo tree. Most projects already use overlays (e.g. science, perl,
haskell...). Start there and you'll save a lot of headache too.

> 
>> and obviously magic.
> 
> No magic, just advanced technology. But you'll have to learn how it
> works to decide whether it is for you, or if something simpler will
> suffice for your needs.
> 

Not only advanced, but sometimes also broken technology, because the
system wasn't really designed from the start. It has grown with time.
Portage is unrecoverable, but we already have efforts of useful
alternatives.


To reply to the topic: If the only reason you want to become a gentoo
developer is "contributing ebuilds", then you should reconsider that,
because there are easier ways to do that.
But if you are interested in politics, PMS, EAPI and other
organizational stuff on top of contributing ebuilds, it might make sense.