Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-commits] gentoo-x86 commit in dev-python/PyZilla: PyZilla-0.1.0.ebuild ChangeLog metadata.xml

[Nirbheek Chauhan <nirbheek@gentoo.org>]

On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 2:14 AM, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 27, 2011 at 3:40 PM, Nirbheek Chauhan <nirbheek@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> It's really simple:
>>
>> (a) If the package has plenty of users, there should be no problems
>> finding a maintainer or a proxy-maintainer.
>
> Uh, I guess that's why we are flooded with people wanting to be
> devs...  There are lots of high-use packages that could use more
> maintainers.  I'm not aware of any teams that would turn away help.
>

Everyone thinks all is dandy, and so no one volunteers. Why would
someone volunteer their help if we don't advertise the need? Every
single team I know has members that are there for historical value and
don't do anything anymore. This means team member lists are inevitably
artificially inflated.

>> (b) If the package has few users and is high-maintenance, it's either
>> already broken, or will get broken soon without a maintainer. Find one
>> or remove it!
>
> If it doesn't build, then it can be removed.  Nobody is arguing with
> that.  If you think that someday it might not build, then just wait a
> few months and if you're right you can satisfy your itch to prune the
> tree...
>

I think you missed my point about fewer users meaning the likelihood
of bugs getting reported being low. And even if bugs get reported, who
reads bug reports assigned to maintainer-needed@gentoo.org?

>> (c) If the package has few users and is low-maintenance, package.mask
>> it so we can figure out who the users are, and we can get them to
>> proxy-maintain it, it's so little work anyway, right?
>
> Uh, package.mask is not intended to be an end-user communication tool.
>  News is slightly better in this respect, but again this is not its
> purpose.
>

End-user? No. Potential developer? Yes. That's why we have a one-month
package.mask period while last-riting unmaintained packages for QA
problems.

> We shouldn't be punishing people for not becoming developers.  I don't
> want to use a distro that throws up warning messages every few months
> because some package I've been using had its developer retire, and I'm
> a developer.  If it breaks and I care enough about it, I'll rescue it.
>  If I'm passionate about it, I'll step in before it breaks.  Holding
> users ransom is not the solution.
>

So you're worried that the "oldness" criteria in the policy should not
be too strict? Cool, that's something for discussion.

>> (d) If the package has very few or no users, what the hell is it doing
>> unmaintained in the tree? It's just eating up disk inodes and space.
>>
>
> Uh, and how much does the inodes, space, and bandwidth consumed by
> those ~700 m-n packages actually cost.  Are we talking about going
> through wailing and gnashing of teeth so that our stakeholders can
> save a total of 45 cents worth of disk space across 50 mirrors and
> 50,000 Gentoo boxes over the next 5 years?  If one person is getting
> use out of it, and nobody is getting hurt, and it costs a few inodes,
> I'm fine with that.
>

One person who gets some use out of it, and how many who either can't
compile it, or can't run it? This kind of thing affects how people see
Gentoo. Besides, removal of a package from the tree doesn't mean
there's no way to use it anymore. For those who still use that one
package that no one else really uses anymore, local portdir_overlay
configuration is really easy.

>> We all like to boast about how gentoo has 15,000 packages, but we
>> neglect to mention that more than 1000 of these are either
>> unmaintained or very poorly maintained. And this is a very
>> conservative number.
>
> I don't know anybody who uses Gentoo because of our huge repository.
> Sure, compared to LFS it is big.  Compared to most major distros,
> Gentoo isn't all that large.  If all somebody wants is a ton of
> packages they're going to run Debian or whatever.

Note that most other distros have large package numbers because they
split their packages into "pkgname", "pkgname-dev" "pkgname-doc", etc.
I'm not sure if anyone counts source-package numbers for binary
distros.

>  Sure, we have a
> nice repository and we should be proud of it, but I don't think
> anybody is trying to over-inflate our repo size just by loading it up
> with junk.
>
> The thing I don't understand here is that there seems to be some
> perception that having stuff in the tree or in Bugzilla costs us
> something.  Sure, at some level it does, and if 99.99% of portage were
> junk data, then we might have a problem.  However, database records
> and inodes come billions for the dollar.  Having a few percent more
> churn so that we can more gracefully handle the lifecycle of packages
> doesn't seem like much of a sacrifice.  If you're tired of looking at
> junk when you search bugzilla, then you need to think about how you're
> searching it.  These sorts of arguments come up at work all the time
> and unless there is some kind of regulatory issue at stake or real
> loss of revenue associated with lost opportunities, chasing down
> unnecessary database records to be "tidy" almost always costs far more
> than it saves.
>
> I'd be shocked if the total cost to our sponsors in mirror space for
> m-n packages exceeded the value of time spent by everybody reading
> this thread.  I think we should be practical - I'm all for giving
> treecleaners a free hand when packages really cause problems, but
> being anal-retentive just for the sake of doing so doesn't seem to
> create real value.
>

Where did this come from? My entire argument was based around the fact
that unmaintained packages that may or may not be broken fundamentally
constitute a *bad* experience for the user. If we cannot guarantee
that bugs for a package will be fixed, we should not take up the
responsibility of the package!

Which is worse? Suddenly pulling a package from underneath the feet of
users when it inevitably breaks or telling them upfront that it's
*completely not* supported by us so they can do something about it
before it breaks?


-- 
~Nirbheek Chauhan

Gentoo GNOME+Mozilla Team