[gentoo-dev] [RFC] Non-Dev Contributors and the Tree

[gentoo-dev] [RFC] Non-Dev Contributors and the Tree

[Michael Cummings]

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...or, Trees and Tree Climbers: Shaking up the tree

Parts of this argument have been raised before. If this particular angle
has already been addressed, kindly point me to the archive so I can see
whether I have anything new and original to add or not. Please desist
from simply flaming this as a "seen it, declined it" deal.

I was listening to last night's recording of the Linux Link Tech Show,
during which one of the Fedora leads was interviewed. During the course
of his talk, he mentioned that Fedora had a 1000+ contributors, with
only about 250 (ish) actual Fedora developers with commit rights to the
final tree. This got me thinking about how Gentoo has historically
handled contributors and the tree, and made me wonder if there weren't a
better way that would help bolster direct community involvement without
simultaneously overtaxing our existing infrastructure.

One of Gentoo's flaws, and I can say this because I have been guilty of
doing this at least once in the dim past, is that our work-from tree is
the same one that the mirrors are reading and people are downloading to
their desktops. A mistake in committing to CVS ruins it for everyone,
with rapid (and rabid) users getting bit right after a --sync. We've
done a good job of catching and correcting these incidents - but
wouldn't it be nice if they couldn't happen as easily?

One of the comments I hear frequently from active users is that they
would love to be able to help maintain a package, or assist with what we
do, but have neither the time nor the energy to become a full dev. Sure,
we have the various overlays, bugzilla, and the home grown solutions
that some teams have come up with, but there isn't a cohesive, unified
approach to the issue of maintaining by proxy that I am aware of.

What I would like to propose is that we have an official (yes, official)
cvs overlay that is used by developers *and* contributors to commit new
ebuilds and changes to. Mirrors would still pull, as they always have,
from the gentoo-x86 cvs repo. "Official" Gentoo developers would then be
able to take from the overlay and commit to the main tree at will, but
have a common stomping ground for contributors and developers to work in
without fear of breaking the rest of the tree. We reward those users
(pardon the terms if you find that condescending, its not intended as
such) with the drive and passion, but not the means, resources, or time,
by making them contributors to this overlay, where they can make cvs
commits.

This overlay wouldn't necessarily need to be the whole of the tree,
either. Some areas, such as profiles, could be absent, as well as select
projects (perhaps the kernel and toolchain portions?). These
contributors wouldn't need to have a flood of @gentoo.org email
addresses - they are only contributors who, for whatever reason, are not
actually full scale developers.

What's the advantage to the developer community? I'm glad you asked :) I
see a few benefits right from the start. First, it frees up some of the
developers from the 'grind' of the bump-test-commit cycle. We (the
Gentoo developers) didn't come here to be ebuild monkeys. We came here,
gave our energy and time, so that we could help shape and make something
out of this product. The bump and grind is a necessary part of it, but
too often, especially for teams managing large segments (perl team
being, obviously, no exception), that bump-test-commit cycle becomes the
only thing you are ever doing.

This might mean some developers, who joined Gentoo solely for the
ability to commit new ebuilds and maintain a small segment of the tree,
decide to downgrade themselves to contributor status. That isn't a bad
thing, and I wouldn't suggest that it be compulsory either. But it would
also mean that we would be opening the doors for those folks that
actually want to help with the maintenance without the pressure and
requirements of being a dev. Perhaps the definition and role of a dev
would need to be modified, enhanced even, under this new guise, but I
don't believe that to be a bad thing.

What about the infrastructure requirements? Well, hopefully, A) we're
scaled so that if we had a 1000 developers with cvs access we'd be ok
anyway (in which case, under this proposal, there would be little
difference - 1000 cvs accounts is a 1000 cvs accounts, no matter which
way you slice it), and B) we'd only be talking about the *actual* cvs
end of the house, not anything that would affect the mirrors. I wouldn't
suggest that this additional cvs root be opened to the user community at
large, or that the mirrors be asked to dup it as well. Since in my
(limited?) vision this would only be a segment, albeit a sizable
segment, I'll grant, it shouldn't exceed any of the current thresholds
we have.

As developers, we are already accustomed (and if not, what exactly are
you maintaining in the tree??) to using a cvs checkout as an overlay.
This would simply be adding another checkout - and, it strikes me,
finally achieving the 'stable' vs 'development' branches of the tree.
And yes, in case the question is posed, the 'stable' branch that is
mirrored would still have ~arch'd material; removing testing ebuilds is
not the intent. The intent is to open up the development and maintenance
of the tree to the audience at large. And maybe even making the dev
mailing list about development again, as devs that were formerly tied up
in in the bump cycle are now free to do what they came here to do: have
parties and lobby for the softserve machine.

This email was not vetted by any member of infrastructure, or the
developers at large (that's what I thought the -dev mailing list was a
forum for, after all). I speak in hypotheticals and potentials here, not
based on hard concrete facts, so some of my premises may be amiss. Yes,
I believe we would need to create some new 'tools' (ok, shell scripts :)
to help with some of the maintenance involved in this plan - but that
should hardly be a hinderance, as I'm sure there's plenty of us that
love sinking our teeth into a good shell script (or a bad one, as the
case may be).

Comments?

~mcummings

P.S. Core readers, the irony isn't lost on me that I am posting to dev.
Consider this my last ditch post about development on -dev :)
- --

- -----o()o----------------------------------------------
Michael Cummings   |    #gentoo-dev, #gentoo-perl
Gentoo Perl Dev    |    on irc.freenode.net
Gentoo/SPARC
Gentoo/AMD64
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Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Non-Dev Contributors and the Tree

[Wulf C. Krueger]

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On Thursday, June 7, 2007 01:43:45 PM Michael Cummings wrote:
> ...or, Trees and Tree Climbers: Shaking up the tree

You forgot about the tree huggers! ;-)


I mostly agree with your arguments but seeing what we have in the Sunrise 
overlay I don't think we need another one.

Today, people can get involved by submitting ebuilds to (and maintaining 
them in) Sunrise rather easily. As easily as devs can take ebuilds from 
there and add them to the official tree.

What would/should be different compared to that if we implemented your 
suggestion?

Best regards, Wulf

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Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Non-Dev Contributors and the Tree

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Thu, 2007-06-07 at 07:43 -0400, Michael Cummings wrote:
> What I would like to propose is that we have an official (yes, official)
> cvs overlay that is used by developers *and* contributors to commit new
> ebuilds and changes to. Mirrors would still pull, as they always have,
> from the gentoo-x86 cvs repo. "Official" Gentoo developers would then be
> able to take from the overlay and commit to the main tree at will, but
> have a common stomping ground for contributors and developers to work in
> without fear of breaking the rest of the tree. We reward those users
> (pardon the terms if you find that condescending, its not intended as
> such) with the drive and passion, but not the means, resources, or time,
> by making them contributors to this overlay, where they can make cvs
> commits.
> 
> This overlay wouldn't necessarily need to be the whole of the tree,
> either. Some areas, such as profiles, could be absent, as well as select
> projects (perhaps the kernel and toolchain portions?). These
> contributors wouldn't need to have a flood of @gentoo.org email
> addresses - they are only contributors who, for whatever reason, are not
> actually full scale developers.

I'm just asking, but isn't this exactly what Sunrise is supposed to be?

Isn't this the reason it was approved by the previous Council?

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Non-Dev Contributors and the Tree

[Vlastimil Babka]

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Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-06-07 at 07:43 -0400, Michael Cummings wrote:
>> What I would like to propose is that we have an official (yes, official)
>> cvs overlay that is used by developers *and* contributors to commit new
>> ebuilds and changes to. Mirrors would still pull, as they always have,
>> from the gentoo-x86 cvs repo. "Official" Gentoo developers would then be
>> able to take from the overlay and commit to the main tree at will, but
>> have a common stomping ground for contributors and developers to work in
>> without fear of breaking the rest of the tree. We reward those users
>> (pardon the terms if you find that condescending, its not intended as
>> such) with the drive and passion, but not the means, resources, or time,
>> by making them contributors to this overlay, where they can make cvs
>> commits.
>>
>> This overlay wouldn't necessarily need to be the whole of the tree,
>> either. Some areas, such as profiles, could be absent, as well as select
>> projects (perhaps the kernel and toolchain portions?). These
>> contributors wouldn't need to have a flood of @gentoo.org email
>> addresses - they are only contributors who, for whatever reason, are not
>> actually full scale developers.
> 
> I'm just asking, but isn't this exactly what Sunrise is supposed to be?
> 
> Isn't this the reason it was approved by the previous Council?

Well the difference is that AFAIK Sunrise is just for maintainer-wanted
stuff that's not in the tree yet, but Michael talks about (rev)bumps of
stuff that's already in tree.

Personally I think that project/herd overlays with non-dev contributors
already work well (at least for Java team) and don't see much benefit in
some overlay for everything.
- --
Vlastimil Babka (Caster)
Gentoo/Java
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Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Non-Dev Contributors and the Tree

[Wulf C. Krueger]

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On Thursday, June 7, 2007 08:34:37 PM Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> Well the difference is that AFAIK Sunrise is just for maintainer-wanted
> stuff that's not in the tree yet, but Michael talks about (rev)bumps of
> stuff that's already in tree.

AFAIK, if the maintainer agrees, it's fine to have other stuff in Sunrise, 
too. 

I've tried to get a user maintain a live ebuild there for fvwm for 
example, taviso agreed to it, Sunrise agreed - it's just the user who's 
lazy why that's not already reality. :-)

> Personally I think that project/herd overlays with non-dev contributors
> already work well (at least for Java team) and don't see much benefit
> in some overlay for everything.

Same here for the KDE overlays. The most active contributor is a user, not 
any dev. :-)

Best regards, Wulf

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[gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Non-Dev Contributors and the Tree

[Duncan]

"Wulf C. Krueger" <philantrop@gentoo.org> posted
200706071650.54612.philantrop@gentoo.org, excerpted below, on  Thu, 07 Jun
2007 16:50:54 +0200:

> I mostly agree with your arguments but seeing what we have in the
> Sunrise overlay I don't think we need another one.
> 
> Today, people can get involved by submitting ebuilds to (and maintaining
> them in) Sunrise rather easily. As easily as devs can take ebuilds from
> there and add them to the official tree.
> 
> What would/should be different compared to that if we implemented your
> suggestion?

The difference, as I read the proposal, is that while Sunrise is about 
packages that are /not/ in the main tree yet (if it's moved to the tree, 
it's out of sunrise, tho it might move to another overlay if 
appropriate), this proposal would extend that to packages that are in the 
tree as well.

(Vetted) users could commit to in-tree packages, but only in the (main) 
development overlay.  It'd be Sunrise, but just as devs watch what's 
going on there with the eventual goal of getting some of the ebuilds into 
the tree, so here, devs would watch and make commits to the (mirrored) 
tree from the development overlay.

I've not read the rest of the responses yet, but the question I had 
was... OK, but won't that result in either (a) developers getting /more/ 
bump/test/grind, not less, since more of it would be taking commits 
already made by users and applying them to the mirrored tree (the 
committing users get more of the creativity, the devs end up being just 
shuttle monkeys, vetting then shuttling from the dev tree to the mirrored 
tree), or (b) the mirrored tree eventually falling seriously behind?  IMO 
there may need to be mechanisms to prevent it from going one way or the 
other, as I don't otherwise see the proposed situation of dev then 
mirrored tree as being stable over time -- it'll lean toward a or b above.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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[gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Non-Dev Contributors and the Tree

[Steve Long]

Duncan wrote:
> The difference, as I read the proposal, is that while Sunrise is about
> packages that are /not/ in the main tree yet (if it's moved to the tree,
> it's out of sunrise, tho it might move to another overlay if
> appropriate), this proposal would extend that to packages that are in the
> tree as well.
>
Thanks for the clarification.

> (Vetted) users could commit to in-tree packages, but only in the (main)
> development overlay.  It'd be Sunrise, but just as devs watch what's
> going on there with the eventual goal of getting some of the ebuilds into
> the tree, so here, devs would watch and make commits to the (mirrored)
> tree from the development overlay.
>
Makes sense, although it does sound like sunrise could be extended for this
purpose. Of course i have nfc about how sunrise works behind-teh-scenes..

> I've not read the rest of the responses yet, but the question I had
> was... OK, but won't that result in either (a) developers getting /more/
> bump/test/grind, not less, since more of it would be taking commits
> already made by users and applying them to the mirrored tree (the
> committing users get more of the creativity, the devs end up being just
> shuttle monkeys, vetting then shuttling from the dev tree to the mirrored
> tree),
>
Hmm good point. I was thinking it might fit more with the suggestion for
users[1] to be involved with patches etc. This all sounds like the wine
triage thing[2] tho, which would need perhaps a more streamlined usage of
bugzilla so that discussions don't take place there, but on the m-l (see
the recently linked FOSS book about this exact issue.) Of course
discussions with no useful purpose need to be proactively filtered..

> or (b) the mirrored tree eventually falling seriously behind?  IMO 
> there may need to be mechanisms to prevent it from going one way or the
> other, as I don't otherwise see the proposed situation of dev then
> mirrored tree as being stable over time -- it'll lean toward a or b above.
> 
Well it's always a balancing act, but neither of those poles sounds
attractive. Personally i think use of Deskzilla and development of a Free
equivalent would really help, along with useful posts like yours of
course ;)

Regards,
igli

     #friendly-coders @
      irc.freenode.org

We're still here for you. ;D

[1] Solely in the interests of avoiding self-mutilation by the more fragile
members of this community ;p
[2] http://kegel.com/wine/qa/#triage

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Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Non-Dev Contributors and the Tree

[Kent Fredric]

On 6/7/07, Michael Cummings <mcummings@gentoo.org> wrote:
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>
> ...or, Trees and Tree Climbers: Shaking up the tree
>

>
> Comments?
>
> ~mcummings
>

As a non-dev with not a lot of free time, I applaud this suggestion.
However, my core fear is the potential for it becoming subject to
abuse, and people insisting on repeatedly uploading patches that are
not actually wanted / necessary for the project, despite the package
maintainer saying 'dude , stop'

Basically, if a non-maintainer wants maintenance rights, how do they
go about attaining them? ,  an automated service, or some vetting
process?

How do we go about handling the problem with the predicted increase in
collisions?

Is CVS fast enough / flexible enough for such a massive change in users?

(forgive me if I've made a misunderstanding, but im a SVN man, not a CVS'er )
-- 
Kent
ruby -e '[1, 2, 4, 7, 0, 9, 5, 8, 3, 10, 11, 6, 12, 13].each{|x|
print "enNOSPicAMreil kdrtf@gma.com"[(2*x)..(2*x+1)]}'
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[gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Non-Dev Contributors and the Tree

[Steve Long]

Kent Fredric wrote:
>> Comments?
>> ~mcummings
>>
> As a non-dev with not a lot of free time, I applaud this suggestion.
> However, my core fear is the potential for it becoming subject to
> abuse, and people insisting on repeatedly uploading patches that are
> not actually wanted / necessary for the project, despite the package
> maintainer saying 'dude , stop'
>
Well presumably if the maintainer has said it in bugzilla/ whichever
tracking mechanism you use, then it's on record. If it's transparent, it's
hard for people to argue about it other than on the merits. And users and
devs share a common interest in getting the software working optimally.

> Basically, if a non-maintainer wants maintenance rights, how do they
> go about attaining them? ,  an automated service, or some vetting
> process?
>
Dunno what the procedure might end up becoming, but my understanding is
commit right to the sunrise overlay, from where a dev has to commit it to
the main tree. It seems like a logical extension of sunrise, and i am sure
there are stats on who has submitted what to sunrise in the past. So there
is a baseline for whom to invite to become <insertNameOfNewPost>s.

> How do we go about handling the problem with the predicted increase in
> collisions?
>
I guess it depends on what the predicted increase would be. Maybe one of the
infra bods can enlighten us? (I'm guessing you'd take the writes of the
users automatically selected and see how many collisions there would have
been with the ebuilds they contributed to. A patch that got accepted
wouldn't count, of course, if it were possible to track same,)

> Is CVS fast enough / flexible enough for such a massive change in users?
> 
> (forgive me if I've made a misunderstanding, but im a SVN man, not a
> CVS'er )
>
Well aiui CVS is a lot less resource-intensive than SVN and additionally the
proposal was to utilise existing infra slightly differently. It doesn't
sound like more workload for the servers involved.

TBH it sounds more like the kernel model than anything; each individual is
responsible for the commits they make with their signature. If they have
come from elsewhere is irrelevant (apart from a legal viewpoint.) Code
responsibility lies with one, when one presses send.

kk or <Enter>


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[gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Non-Dev Contributors and the Tree

[Stefan Schweizer]

Steve Long wrote:
> Dunno what the procedure might end up becoming, but my understanding is
> commit right to the sunrise overlay, from where a dev has to commit it to
> the main tree. It seems like a logical extension of sunrise, and i am sure
> there are stats on who has submitted what to sunrise in the past. So there
> is a baseline for whom to invite to become <insertNameOfNewPost>s.

Snrise already has such an "extension". A portage-review/ subdirectory,
where ebuilds from the gentoo-x86 + changes can be posted. A dev then takes
those and reviews them to the main tree and removes them again from the dir

The process has worked really good so far. I suggest you to read up on how
this is currently being done on overlays.gentoo.org/proj/sunrise and if you
are interested I invite you to join #gentoo-sunrise to see how it is done.

The current log:
http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/sunrise/log/portage-review

You will notice the regular "in portage", "now reviewed", "in cvs" messages

Best regards,
Stefan

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Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Non-Dev Contributors and the Tree

[Elias Probst]

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On Friday 08 June 2007 09:01:54 Kent Fredric wrote:
> As a non-dev with not a lot of free time, I applaud this suggestion.
> However, my core fear is the potential for it becoming subject to
> abuse, and people insisting on repeatedly uploading patches that are
> not actually wanted / necessary for the project, despite the package
> maintainer saying 'dude , stop'

Just a ++ for this by me. ;-)

Regards, Elias P.

-- 
A really nice number:
"09:F9:11:02:9D:74:E3:5B:D8:41:56:C5:63:56:88:C0"

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[gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Non-Dev Contributors and the Tree

[Steve Long]

Stefan Schweizer wrote:
> The process has worked really good so far. I suggest you to read up on how
> this is currently being done on overlays.gentoo.org/proj/sunrise and if
> you are interested I invite you to join #gentoo-sunrise to see how it is
> done.
> 
Lovely, nice to meet you! Sorry i went off for the weekend.. Occasionally I
make sense (but only if welp says it's ok and spaceinvader agrees.. ie not
often- you deal with them then! ;)


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