[gentoo-dev] Becoming a Gentoo developer?

[gentoo-dev] Becoming a Gentoo developer?

[Yanestra]

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Hi,

I am long time user of Gentoo and I tinker with the idea of becoming
Gentoo developer.

I am a software developer by profession, but I am not quite sure if I
should involve with Gentoo ebuild development.

To be honest, I have not the slightest imagination what becoming a
Gentoo developer might mean. Things seem to be abhorringly complicated.

As far as I understand, there are developers, proxy developers, then
there is something like Project Sunrise which I don't understand.

There are apparently several different portage source repositories,
basing on different software, and furthermore, there is layman. As far
as I remember, portage is stored in cvs, where there is also git, and
somewhere subversion seems to linger.

And there is lots of documentation that appears to be outdated or
strangely unattached to questions concerning organisation and overall
structure.

Can someone please tell me where to start becoming a developer? Do there
exist something like quality guidelines for ebuilds?

Why is there such a chaos?

Thanks!


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

[Pacho Ramos]

El dom, 12-04-2015 a las 14:17 +0200, Yanestra escribió:
> Hi,
> 
> I am long time user of Gentoo and I tinker with the idea of becoming
> Gentoo developer.
> 
> I am a software developer by profession, but I am not quite sure if I
> should involve with Gentoo ebuild development.
> 
> To be honest, I have not the slightest imagination what becoming a
> Gentoo developer might mean. Things seem to be abhorringly
> complicated.
> 
> As far as I understand, there are developers, proxy developers, then
> there is something like Project Sunrise which I don't understand.
> 
> There are apparently several different portage source repositories,
> basing on different software, and furthermore, there is layman. As far
> as I remember, portage is stored in cvs, where there is also git, and
> somewhere subversion seems to linger.
> 
> And there is lots of documentation that appears to be outdated or
> strangely unattached to questions concerning organisation and overall
> structure.
> 
> Can someone please tell me where to start becoming a developer? Do
> there exist something like quality guidelines for ebuilds?
> 
> Why is there such a chaos?
> 
> Thanks!
> 

Hi!

I don't see such chaos :/

Did you take a look to
https://www.gentoo.org/get-involved/become-developer/
?

Regarding the documentation needed to fulfill the quizzes, the quizzes
already contain "tips" to help people to find the documentation, also,
most of the useful information is at:
https://devmanual.gentoo.org/

Then, starting to read Devmanual would be a good start :)

Best regards

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

[Yanestra]

On 04/12/2015 03:08 PM, Pacho Ramos wrote:
> Hi! I don't see such chaos :/
Maybe you can explain what this maintainer / proxy maintainer / Sunrise
fuss is all about?

I've never seen the page you mentioned about the recruiting process.
Sounds strange.

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

[Andrew Savchenko]

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On Sun, 12 Apr 2015 16:27:53 +0200 Yanestra wrote:
> On 04/12/2015 03:08 PM, Pacho Ramos wrote:
> > Hi! I don't see such chaos :/
> Maybe you can explain what this maintainer / proxy maintainer / Sunrise
> fuss is all about?

Maintainer is a Gentoo developers who maintains a package.

Proxy maintainer is a Gentoo developer who proxies user maintaining
a package. User is called a "proxied maintainer" in such case, that
is probably what you meant.

That is, if Gentoo user wants to help maintain a currently orphaned
package (i.e. a package without maintainer or an officially
maintained package, but suffering from serious issues where current
maintainer can't keep up with all bugs/updates and needs help),
he/she may maintain that package without becoming Gentoo developer,
for details see:
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Proxy_Maintainers

Sunrise is an overlay intended for user-submitted ebuilds reviewed
by developers. By its spirit it is somewhat similar to
proxy-maintainers project, but different in implementation and
review process.

There are other overlays available: some are official, some are
user-maintained, so you may ask for your own personal overlay as
well.

Official overlays are usually used for a dedicated projects with
narrow audience and/or as a staging grounds for packages before
they will enter main Gentoo tree.

And there is only one main Gentoo tree (also known as a "portage
tree" due to historical reasons). There are multiple protocols via
which this tree is available (cvs, rsync mirror, git mirror), but
tree is the same.

> I've never seen the page you mentioned about the recruiting process.
> Sounds strange.
 
Happy googling :)

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko

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

[Andreas K. Huettel]

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Hash: SHA512

Am Sonntag, 12. April 2015, 16:27:53 schrieb Yanestra:
>
> Maybe you can explain what this maintainer / proxy maintainer / Sunrise
> fuss is all about?

Mostly ways of getting involved for people who are new to Gentoo. Attempts to 
"make the initial step easier". The number of such attempts has exploded 
recently, and it tends to get confusing.

* Proxy-maintainership means "you take care of some ebuilds, and a developer 
commits the stuff for you". Which is good for the start, but in the end it 
just generates double work, so if you're serious about contributing more, 
becoming a full dev over time is the way to go.

* Sunrise is an overlay for user contributions, with rather strict review and 
QA guidelines, and a good place to learn how to write ebuilds. Due to limited 
manpower it is sadly a bit inactive right now.

While this is all very nice, the main thing for becoming developer is 1) find 
a way to contribute (i.e. something that interests you), 2) find a mentor 
(ideally with related interests). 

> There are apparently several different portage source repositories,
> basing on different software, and furthermore, there is layman. As far
> as I remember, portage is stored in cvs, where there is also git, and
> somewhere subversion seems to linger.

There is one main and official portage tree. Or in newspeak, the Gentoo 
repository. You know, the thing that goes into /usr/portage. It sadly still 
lives on cvs. That may change in the future.

Overlays are add-on repositories which add more ebuilds. They can use any sort 
of version control system you like, be maintained by just about everyone and 
have any or no quality control guidelines at all.

Don't believe any of the stuff you hear about Gentoo decentralization. Just 
because someone makes a lot of noise doesn't necessarily mean it'll have any 
impact. 

> And there is lots of documentation that appears to be outdated or
> strangely unattached to questions concerning organisation and overall
> structure.
> Do there exist something like quality guidelines for ebuilds?
> Why is there such a chaos?

Much documentation is being reorganized at the moment. You should start with 
the main website. Anything in the "Project:"  namespace of the wiki is also 
official.

Otherwise, Pacho already mentioned the most important page. 

https://www.gentoo.org/get-involved/become-developer/

Cheers, 
Andreas

- -- 
Andreas K. Huettel
Gentoo Linux developer (council, perl, libreoffice)
dilfridge@gentoo.org
http://www.akhuettel.de/
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Becoming a Gentoo developer?

[Daniel Campbell]

On 04/12/2015 05:17 AM, Yanestra wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am long time user of Gentoo and I tinker with the idea of becoming
> Gentoo developer.
> 
> I am a software developer by profession, but I am not quite sure if I
> should involve with Gentoo ebuild development.
> 
> To be honest, I have not the slightest imagination what becoming a
> Gentoo developer might mean. Things seem to be abhorringly complicated.
> 
> As far as I understand, there are developers, proxy developers, then
> there is something like Project Sunrise which I don't understand.
> 
> There are apparently several different portage source repositories,
> basing on different software, and furthermore, there is layman. As far
> as I remember, portage is stored in cvs, where there is also git, and
> somewhere subversion seems to linger.
> 
> And there is lots of documentation that appears to be outdated or
> strangely unattached to questions concerning organisation and overall
> structure.
> 
> Can someone please tell me where to start becoming a developer? Do there
> exist something like quality guidelines for ebuilds?
> 
> Why is there such a chaos?
> 
> Thanks!
> 

As someone who is undergoing their IRC interview soon, I think I can
answer some of these questions:

* There are developers, proxy-maintainers, and the Sunrise project.
Developers have access to the main Gentoo repository of ebuilds and do
their best to maintain a quality tree. Proxy-maintainers are regular
Gentoo users who "adopt" packages and pledge to help Gentoo developers
in maintaining them until either they become a developer themselves or
until another developer adopts the package officially. The Sunrise
project is a separate tree where developers and users collaborate in
getting new or specialized packages into a semi-official repository.
Developers assist users in getting ebuilds up to snuff and help them
build practical skills in contributing to Gentoo in a more structured
manner.

* Documentation, like the rest of Gentoo, is powered by volunteers. If
you find any missing, erroneous, or outdated information, please file a
bug or, if you have permissions on the Wiki, edit it yourself!

* The general structure of Gentoo as an organization is somewhat simple.
The Council makes all the big and important decisions, while developers
have their own "herds" for specific goals (say, the perl, lisp, java,
and games herds), which also correspond to projects with the same goals.
The Foundation exists to give Gentoo adequate monetary and legal support
in carrying out its goals as a distribution. Everything else is pretty
much just a bunch of developers working together.

* Gentoo's official tree is in CVS for now, but there is a git migration
planned. I don't know the timing or exact plans for the immediate
future, but my guess is things will be switching to git over the long
term once logistic problems are solved. SVN repositories are available
over layman only, as far as I'm aware.

* Layman itself is a way to activate other repositories. That method is
partially deprecated in favor of /etc/repos.conf/ files, which allow for
greater, clearer control over repositories. Current releases of layman
will interface with the new way of managing, and there are tools in
place to make migration (mostly) painless.

* The way to begin your journey to become a developer lies mostly in
just helping out Gentoo, studying the Devmanual [0], and contacting
recruiters to see if there is a mentor available for you.

If you're interested in becoming an ebuild developer, you should try out
the ebuild quiz [1]. For the most part it just takes a cautious and
attentive eye, some adequate knowledge of bash, and familiarity with
common building and admin tools. Since you're a developer by trade, I'm
sure it wouldn't be a big problem for you to reach developer status. It
takes time and effort, but in my personal opinion it's been worth every
moment.

I hope this helps!

~Daniel

[0] https://devmanual.gentoo.org
[1] https://wwwold.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/quiz/ebuild-quiz.txt

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

[Patrice Clement]

Monday 13 Apr 2015 03:27:19, Daniel Campbell wrote :
> On 04/12/2015 05:17 AM, Yanestra wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I am long time user of Gentoo and I tinker with the idea of becoming
> > Gentoo developer.
> > 
> > I am a software developer by profession, but I am not quite sure if I
> > should involve with Gentoo ebuild development.
> > 
> > To be honest, I have not the slightest imagination what becoming a
> > Gentoo developer might mean. Things seem to be abhorringly complicated.
> > 
> > As far as I understand, there are developers, proxy developers, then
> > there is something like Project Sunrise which I don't understand.
> > 
> > There are apparently several different portage source repositories,
> > basing on different software, and furthermore, there is layman. As far
> > as I remember, portage is stored in cvs, where there is also git, and
> > somewhere subversion seems to linger.
> > 
> > And there is lots of documentation that appears to be outdated or
> > strangely unattached to questions concerning organisation and overall
> > structure.
> > 
> > Can someone please tell me where to start becoming a developer? Do there
> > exist something like quality guidelines for ebuilds?
> > 
> > Why is there such a chaos?
> > 
> > Thanks!
> > 
> 
> As someone who is undergoing their IRC interview soon, I think I can
> answer some of these questions:
> 
> * There are developers, proxy-maintainers, and the Sunrise project.
> Developers have access to the main Gentoo repository of ebuilds and do
> their best to maintain a quality tree. Proxy-maintainers are regular
> Gentoo users who "adopt" packages and pledge to help Gentoo developers
> in maintaining them until either they become a developer themselves or
> until another developer adopts the package officially. The Sunrise
> project is a separate tree where developers and users collaborate in
> getting new or specialized packages into a semi-official repository.
> Developers assist users in getting ebuilds up to snuff and help them
> build practical skills in contributing to Gentoo in a more structured
> manner.
> 
> * Documentation, like the rest of Gentoo, is powered by volunteers. If
> you find any missing, erroneous, or outdated information, please file a
> bug or, if you have permissions on the Wiki, edit it yourself!
> 
> * The general structure of Gentoo as an organization is somewhat simple.
> The Council makes all the big and important decisions, while developers
> have their own "herds" for specific goals (say, the perl, lisp, java,
> and games herds), which also correspond to projects with the same goals.
> The Foundation exists to give Gentoo adequate monetary and legal support
> in carrying out its goals as a distribution. Everything else is pretty
> much just a bunch of developers working together.
> 
> * Gentoo's official tree is in CVS for now, but there is a git migration
> planned. I don't know the timing or exact plans for the immediate
> future, but my guess is things will be switching to git over the long
> term once logistic problems are solved. SVN repositories are available
> over layman only, as far as I'm aware.
> 
> * Layman itself is a way to activate other repositories. That method is
> partially deprecated in favor of /etc/repos.conf/ files, which allow for
> greater, clearer control over repositories. Current releases of layman
> will interface with the new way of managing, and there are tools in
> place to make migration (mostly) painless.
> 
> * The way to begin your journey to become a developer lies mostly in
> just helping out Gentoo, studying the Devmanual [0], and contacting
> recruiters to see if there is a mentor available for you.
> 
> If you're interested in becoming an ebuild developer, you should try out
> the ebuild quiz [1]. For the most part it just takes a cautious and
> attentive eye, some adequate knowledge of bash, and familiarity with
> common building and admin tools. Since you're a developer by trade, I'm
> sure it wouldn't be a big problem for you to reach developer status. It
> takes time and effort, but in my personal opinion it's been worth every
> moment.
> 
> I hope this helps!
> 
> ~Daniel
> 
> [0] https://devmanual.gentoo.org
> [1] https://wwwold.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/quiz/ebuild-quiz.txt
> 
Hi Yanestra

Daniel summed it up pretty well: becoming a dev is a long and lengthy process
but worth it in the end cause you'll get to meet smart and passionate folks
along the path.

However, I'd like to point out yet another URL nobody has mentioned so far:
bugzilla [2] aka the Gentoo bug tracking system. There are always tons of bugs
waiting to get picked up. You're a software developer by profession so I would
advise you to look for bugs that lie in your field of interest. Gentoo isn't
one "big" aggregate of developers. We're broken down into small teams of people
working on a specific topic. You can check out the list of "Projects" here [3].
For instance do you like Perl? Help out the Perl team package Perl packages. Or
maybe you're a Pythonista? Give the Python team a hand. And so on and so forth.

Pick something you like and get involved. :)

Patrice

[2] https://bugs.gentoo.org/
[3] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Gentoo

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

[Patrice Clement]

If, by any chance, you happen to like Java, we're looking for fresh blood.

We're kinda short of manpower in the team at the moment: with over 1000 bugs
assigned to java@g.o, any form of help is welcome. Further, you'll get to work
on maintaining some of Chewi's ebuilds, some of which encompass Minecraft. 

(you might wonder: who's interested in playing Minecraft on Gentoo? I asked
myself the same question till I bumped into Chewi..)

Patrice

Monday 13 Apr 2015 14:20:56, Patrice Clement wrote :
> Monday 13 Apr 2015 03:27:19, Daniel Campbell wrote :
> > On 04/12/2015 05:17 AM, Yanestra wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > I am long time user of Gentoo and I tinker with the idea of becoming
> > > Gentoo developer.
> > > 
> > > I am a software developer by profession, but I am not quite sure if I
> > > should involve with Gentoo ebuild development.
> > > 
> > > To be honest, I have not the slightest imagination what becoming a
> > > Gentoo developer might mean. Things seem to be abhorringly complicated.
> > > 
> > > As far as I understand, there are developers, proxy developers, then
> > > there is something like Project Sunrise which I don't understand.
> > > 
> > > There are apparently several different portage source repositories,
> > > basing on different software, and furthermore, there is layman. As far
> > > as I remember, portage is stored in cvs, where there is also git, and
> > > somewhere subversion seems to linger.
> > > 
> > > And there is lots of documentation that appears to be outdated or
> > > strangely unattached to questions concerning organisation and overall
> > > structure.
> > > 
> > > Can someone please tell me where to start becoming a developer? Do there
> > > exist something like quality guidelines for ebuilds?
> > > 
> > > Why is there such a chaos?
> > > 
> > > Thanks!
> > > 
> > 
> > As someone who is undergoing their IRC interview soon, I think I can
> > answer some of these questions:
> > 
> > * There are developers, proxy-maintainers, and the Sunrise project.
> > Developers have access to the main Gentoo repository of ebuilds and do
> > their best to maintain a quality tree. Proxy-maintainers are regular
> > Gentoo users who "adopt" packages and pledge to help Gentoo developers
> > in maintaining them until either they become a developer themselves or
> > until another developer adopts the package officially. The Sunrise
> > project is a separate tree where developers and users collaborate in
> > getting new or specialized packages into a semi-official repository.
> > Developers assist users in getting ebuilds up to snuff and help them
> > build practical skills in contributing to Gentoo in a more structured
> > manner.
> > 
> > * Documentation, like the rest of Gentoo, is powered by volunteers. If
> > you find any missing, erroneous, or outdated information, please file a
> > bug or, if you have permissions on the Wiki, edit it yourself!
> > 
> > * The general structure of Gentoo as an organization is somewhat simple.
> > The Council makes all the big and important decisions, while developers
> > have their own "herds" for specific goals (say, the perl, lisp, java,
> > and games herds), which also correspond to projects with the same goals.
> > The Foundation exists to give Gentoo adequate monetary and legal support
> > in carrying out its goals as a distribution. Everything else is pretty
> > much just a bunch of developers working together.
> > 
> > * Gentoo's official tree is in CVS for now, but there is a git migration
> > planned. I don't know the timing or exact plans for the immediate
> > future, but my guess is things will be switching to git over the long
> > term once logistic problems are solved. SVN repositories are available
> > over layman only, as far as I'm aware.
> > 
> > * Layman itself is a way to activate other repositories. That method is
> > partially deprecated in favor of /etc/repos.conf/ files, which allow for
> > greater, clearer control over repositories. Current releases of layman
> > will interface with the new way of managing, and there are tools in
> > place to make migration (mostly) painless.
> > 
> > * The way to begin your journey to become a developer lies mostly in
> > just helping out Gentoo, studying the Devmanual [0], and contacting
> > recruiters to see if there is a mentor available for you.
> > 
> > If you're interested in becoming an ebuild developer, you should try out
> > the ebuild quiz [1]. For the most part it just takes a cautious and
> > attentive eye, some adequate knowledge of bash, and familiarity with
> > common building and admin tools. Since you're a developer by trade, I'm
> > sure it wouldn't be a big problem for you to reach developer status. It
> > takes time and effort, but in my personal opinion it's been worth every
> > moment.
> > 
> > I hope this helps!
> > 
> > ~Daniel
> > 
> > [0] https://devmanual.gentoo.org
> > [1] https://wwwold.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/quiz/ebuild-quiz.txt
> > 
> Hi Yanestra
> 
> Daniel summed it up pretty well: becoming a dev is a long and lengthy process
> but worth it in the end cause you'll get to meet smart and passionate folks
> along the path.
> 
> However, I'd like to point out yet another URL nobody has mentioned so far:
> bugzilla [2] aka the Gentoo bug tracking system. There are always tons of bugs
> waiting to get picked up. You're a software developer by profession so I would
> advise you to look for bugs that lie in your field of interest. Gentoo isn't
> one "big" aggregate of developers. We're broken down into small teams of people
> working on a specific topic. You can check out the list of "Projects" here [3].
> For instance do you like Perl? Help out the Perl team package Perl packages. Or
> maybe you're a Pythonista? Give the Python team a hand. And so on and so forth.
> 
> Pick something you like and get involved. :)
> 
> Patrice
> 
> [2] https://bugs.gentoo.org/
> [3] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Gentoo
> 
> 

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

[Yanestra]

Hi,

after a talk with some of the persons present here, it appears, Gentoo
Linux is actually something like a Freemason lodge.

Many secrets, inaugurations, and obviously magic.

People, I can only conclude you are not sane.

This is absolutely ICK ... YOU ARE ICK !!

Disgusting.

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

[Diamond]

On Wed, 15 Apr 2015 05:33:44 +0200
Yanestra <wysiwyg@seismic.de> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> after a talk with some of the persons present here, it appears, Gentoo
> Linux is actually something like a Freemason lodge.
> 
> Many secrets, inaugurations, and obviously magic.
> 
> People, I can only conclude you are not sane.
> 
> This is absolutely ICK ... YOU ARE ICK !!
> 
> Disgusting.
> 
> 

"Let None But Geometers Enter Here." ))
(Phrase wich was inscribed above the entrance to the Platonic
Academy.)

You can just send your patches here:
https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo-portage-rsync-mirror

P.S. The only way to know is to learn.

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

[Peter Stuge]

Yanestra wrote:
> after a talk with some of the persons present here, it appears, Gentoo
> Linux is actually something like a Freemason lodge.

I disagree with this.

I do agree that the threshold to become a developer with write access
to the gentoo repo is very high, which is why I'm not a developer,
although I use Gentoo tools and have been writing ebuilds for many years.
I don't have time for the overhead, so I just maintain my own overlay.


> 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.


> 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.


> 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.


Kind regards

//Peter

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

[Pacho Ramos]

El mié, 15-04-2015 a las 05:33 +0200, Yanestra escribió:
> Hi,
> 
> after a talk with some of the persons present here, it appears, Gentoo
> Linux is actually something like a Freemason lodge.
> 
> Many secrets, inaugurations, and obviously magic.
> 
> People, I can only conclude you are not sane.
> 
> This is absolutely ICK ... YOU ARE ICK !!
> 
> Disgusting.
> 

Personally I don't see the reason of all this blames... is there
something we could do to help you or is this simply trolling? :/

There is no secrets and no "black magic", we are willing to help... what
more do you want we do for you? :| (after hours of working I come back
here and I see this complaints against a contributive work that is done
by volunteers in their free time :|)

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

[Bob Wya]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 251 bytes --]

On 15 April 2015 at 04:33, Yanestra <wysiwyg@seismic.de> wrote:
Blah, blah, blah... BLAH!

Are you maintaining an overlay listed in Layman? If not then it's pretty
obvious that
you're just trolling the mailing list and wasting a lot of folk's time...

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 521 bytes --]

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

[hasufell]

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.

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

[Kent Fredric]

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On 17 April 2015 at 02:22, Bob Wya <bob.mt.wya@gmail.com> wrote:

> Are you maintaining an overlay listed in Layman? If not then it's pretty
> obvious that
> you're just trolling the mailing list and wasting a lot of folk's time...
>


I'm not sure that's the case. Its easy enough to maintain an overlay. Its
easy enough to get yourself into the primary permission bits to be major
contributor to an overlay listed in layman.

But that doesn't really make you a useful gentoo developer, its just a
stepping stone.

The barrier to entry to making useful changes to the CVS tree is presently
several orders of magnitude more daunting than contributing to an overlay.


-- 
Kent

*KENTNL* - https://metacpan.org/author/KENTNL

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

[Kent Fredric]

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On 17 April 2015 at 05:27, hasufell <hasufell@gentoo.org> wrote:

> 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.
>


Contributing ebuilds via overlays is a useful way, and a good place to
start learning how to do things. But its woefully ineffective at being
useful for gentoo's main audience. Gentoo dev's can of course steal stuff
from overlays, but then your point of failure is delegated back to
"stafffing needs", which is in significant shortage.

Contributing ebuilds via bugzilla attachments is another way, both in terms
of proxy-maint and making gentoo-staffs life easier, but you're still stuck
on the staffing-needs problem of having to scehdule somebody to make the
requisite changes to the tree.

And there are quite a few people who are circling gentoo who have so far
only made it as far as those two points, and have found the leap to full
developer so far an overwhelming challenge.

Some might argue you don't want a staffer who hasn't made it past that
guantlet.

But I'm not entirely sure thats true.

But that contribution barrier really seems like it shares a lot in common
with a cult initiation/hazing process, and I appreciated the analogy as so
long as it was not intended to be taken seriously or literally. =)


-- 
Kent

*KENTNL* - https://metacpan.org/author/KENTNL

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

[Alexander Berntsen]

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Hash: SHA256

On 15/04/15 15:02, Peter Stuge wrote:
> the threshold to become a developer with write access to the
> gentoo repo is very high
LOL. No. It's way too low, given our review-less workflow in which any
dev can do essentially whatever they want.
- -- 
Alexander
bernalex@gentoo.org
https://secure.plaimi.net/~alexander
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Becoming a Gentoo developer?

[Andrew Savchenko]

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On Fri, 17 Apr 2015 12:33:06 +0200 Alexander Berntsen wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
> 
> On 15/04/15 15:02, Peter Stuge wrote:
> > the threshold to become a developer with write access to the
> > gentoo repo is very high
> LOL. No. It's way too low, given our review-less workflow in which any
> dev can do essentially whatever they want.

The only net results from strict review workflow (when each commit
of each dev must be reviewed and approved by at least N devs) are
tons of bikeshedding, real quality improvement is marginal, because
people are working in different areas anyway. And if you will
consider, that strict review will require N more times effort and
spent time, actual quality of the tree will drop almost N times,
because number of man hours spent on Gentoo is approximately
constant with the same number of devs.

Really, I'm tired of that review bikeshedding and trolling.
Before continuing talks like that take a list of paper, do some
calculations, think them over.

And do not point at the Linux kernel — they have ~80% paid
developers, so they have resources for that kind of workflow.
We are volunteers here, so we don't.

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko

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

[Kristian Fiskerstrand]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

On 04/17/2015 01:00 PM, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Apr 2015 12:33:06 +0200 Alexander Berntsen wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256
>> 
>> On 15/04/15 15:02, Peter Stuge wrote:
>>> the threshold to become a developer with write access to the 
>>> gentoo repo is very high
>> LOL. No. It's way too low, given our review-less workflow in
>> which any dev can do essentially whatever they want.
> 
> The only net results from strict review workflow (when each commit 
> of each dev must be reviewed and approved by at least N devs) are

Agreed, although to be fair, without putting words in Alexander's
mouth, I believe the original intention was mostly that we should have
a high bar to get commit access, as it involve a great deal of trust
in the first place, a review process would be a mitigant for this, but
as you correctly point out, it simply isn't economical.

As have been pointed out, there are other ways to contribute (proxied
maintenance, overlay, editing wiki, support etc) that is likely a
better starting point than becoming a dev directly.

- -- 
Kristian Fiskerstrand
Public PGP key 0xE3EDFAE3 at hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net
fpr:94CB AFDD 3034 5109 5618 35AA 0B7F 8B60 E3ED FAE3
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Becoming a Gentoo developer?

[Andrew Savchenko]

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Hi,

On Fri, 17 Apr 2015 10:50:34 +1200 Kent Fredric wrote:
> On 17 April 2015 at 02:22, Bob Wya <bob.mt.wya@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Are you maintaining an overlay listed in Layman? If not then it's pretty
> > obvious that
> > you're just trolling the mailing list and wasting a lot of folk's time...
> >
> 
> 
> I'm not sure that's the case. Its easy enough to maintain an overlay. Its
> easy enough to get yourself into the primary permission bits to be major
> contributor to an overlay listed in layman.
> 
> But that doesn't really make you a useful gentoo developer, its just a
> stepping stone.
> 
> The barrier to entry to making useful changes to the CVS tree is presently
> several orders of magnitude more daunting than contributing to an overlay.

Nevertheless it is quite doable. And from my personal experience it
is definitely worth it. Before becoming a dev I had my own overlay
in layman for years. Training gives you a much deeper understanding
of both development process and community relations, this is like an
evolution to another step.

As for overlays, their function is important, but should not be
overestimated. In my vision main function of overlays is sandboxing.
Sandboxing in many aspects: for either packages too new or immature
to be added to the main tree; or for contributions from interested
users who are still not devs; or, perhaps, for packages with too
small target audience to care enough to put them to the tree.

I don't believe in talks about "high quality overlays". All
overlays I ever tried have lesser quality than the main tree,
though some are a bit lesser, while others are horrible. Of course
there may be exceptions, but I know none.

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko

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

[hasufell]

On 04/17/2015 01:00 PM, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Apr 2015 12:33:06 +0200 Alexander Berntsen wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA256
>>
>> On 15/04/15 15:02, Peter Stuge wrote:
>>> the threshold to become a developer with write access to the
>>> gentoo repo is very high
>> LOL. No. It's way too low, given our review-less workflow in which any
>> dev can do essentially whatever they want.
> 
> The only net results from strict review workflow (when each commit
> of each dev must be reviewed and approved by at least N devs) are
> tons of bikeshedding, real quality improvement is marginal, because
> people are working in different areas anyway. And if you will
> consider, that strict review will require N more times effort and
> spent time, actual quality of the tree will drop almost N times,
> because number of man hours spent on Gentoo is approximately
> constant with the same number of devs.

If you have followed the recent discussions about gentoos organizational
structure, review workflow and overlay situation you would know that
there is a pretty simple solution for this problem.

Review workflow will not be random/global. Some gentoo projects already
have strict review workflow. You just have to map this properly to the
tree. If you do that improperly, then ofc it will be crap.

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

[Andrew Savchenko]

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On Fri, 17 Apr 2015 13:14:49 +0200 hasufell wrote:
> On 04/17/2015 01:00 PM, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
> > On Fri, 17 Apr 2015 12:33:06 +0200 Alexander Berntsen wrote:
> >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >> Hash: SHA256
> >>
> >> On 15/04/15 15:02, Peter Stuge wrote:
> >>> the threshold to become a developer with write access to the
> >>> gentoo repo is very high
> >> LOL. No. It's way too low, given our review-less workflow in which any
> >> dev can do essentially whatever they want.
> > 
> > The only net results from strict review workflow (when each commit
> > of each dev must be reviewed and approved by at least N devs) are
> > tons of bikeshedding, real quality improvement is marginal, because
> > people are working in different areas anyway. And if you will
> > consider, that strict review will require N more times effort and
> > spent time, actual quality of the tree will drop almost N times,
> > because number of man hours spent on Gentoo is approximately
> > constant with the same number of devs.
> 
> If you have followed the recent discussions about gentoos organizational
> structure, review workflow and overlay situation you would know that
> there is a pretty simple solution for this problem.

I have followed them and I have seen no solution usable in real
world.
 
> Review workflow will not be random/global. Some gentoo projects already
> have strict review workflow. You just have to map this properly to the
> tree. If you do that improperly, then ofc it will be crap.

Please point to exact projects and exact descriptions of workflow
processes. As for now I see none globally usable. 

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko

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

[hasufell]

On 04/17/2015 02:26 PM, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Apr 2015 13:14:49 +0200 hasufell wrote:
>> On 04/17/2015 01:00 PM, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
>>> On Fri, 17 Apr 2015 12:33:06 +0200 Alexander Berntsen wrote:
>>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>>> Hash: SHA256
>>>>
>>>> On 15/04/15 15:02, Peter Stuge wrote:
>>>>> the threshold to become a developer with write access to the
>>>>> gentoo repo is very high
>>>> LOL. No. It's way too low, given our review-less workflow in which any
>>>> dev can do essentially whatever they want.
>>>
>>> The only net results from strict review workflow (when each commit
>>> of each dev must be reviewed and approved by at least N devs) are
>>> tons of bikeshedding, real quality improvement is marginal, because
>>> people are working in different areas anyway. And if you will
>>> consider, that strict review will require N more times effort and
>>> spent time, actual quality of the tree will drop almost N times,
>>> because number of man hours spent on Gentoo is approximately
>>> constant with the same number of devs.
>>
>> If you have followed the recent discussions about gentoos organizational
>> structure, review workflow and overlay situation you would know that
>> there is a pretty simple solution for this problem.
> 
> I have followed them and I have seen no solution usable in real
> world.
>  

The solution is that for example the ruby project assigns a few
reviewers (e.g. project lead) and if someone wants to bump ruby
packages, he submits a pull request and the assignee is going to be the
ruby project. What's the problem?

Do you think the usb-subsystem maintainer of the kernel is going to
fiddle with the cryptography subsystem all by himself? That's not the
case. And that's why the linux kernel workflow works: competence,
subsystems and trust.

All that is done in real world. And there are tons of tools to automated
such a workflow easily without dumping everything to a single mailing list.

Global reviews will only happen when stuff is actually of global
importance, like non-trivial eclass changes or far-reaching technical
decisions.

So please do some research first before doing broad statements about
what kind of workflow is possible. Other distros successfully use such
workflows.

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

[Andrew Savchenko]

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On Fri, 17 Apr 2015 14:50:00 +0200 hasufell wrote:
> >> If you have followed the recent discussions about gentoos organizational
> >> structure, review workflow and overlay situation you would know that
> >> there is a pretty simple solution for this problem.
> > 
> > I have followed them and I have seen no solution usable in real
> > world.
> >  
> 
> The solution is that for example the ruby project assigns a few
> reviewers (e.g. project lead) and if someone wants to bump ruby
> packages, he submits a pull request and the assignee is going to be the
> ruby project. What's the problem?

The problem is double effort: previously one developer effort was
needed, now effort is doubled at least: reviewers must dig into
details how submitted code works, test it and only then commit. Now
remember that reviewers are also developers. This means that pull
requests will hang for weeks, months, forever due to a lack of time.
On top of all this thinks about maintainer-needed packages or
packages that can't be categorised into some single project, e.g.
*-misc categories.

> Do you think the usb-subsystem maintainer of the kernel is going to
> fiddle with the cryptography subsystem all by himself? That's not the
> case. And that's why the linux kernel workflow works: competence,
> subsystems and trust.

As I pointed above comparision of Gentoo with Linux kernel is
invalid. We have different resources. Another argument that
connectivity between subsystems is much higher in the Linux kernel.

> All that is done in real world. And there are tons of tools to automated
> such a workflow easily without dumping everything to a single mailing list.

Reviews cannot be automated. A human being is still needed to read,
understand and test proposed code. All tools like pull requests and
so automate only a small bit of real work.
 
> Global reviews will only happen when stuff is actually of global
> importance, like non-trivial eclass changes or far-reaching technical
> decisions.

We already have that with gentoo-dev mail list. And I'm happy with
current solution. If you can't handle patchset from e-mails, learn
houw to use tools, e.g. quilt.

> So please do some research first before doing broad statements about
> what kind of workflow is possible. 
 
I already done such research and my conclusion is that it can't be
fundamentally changed. Only small improvements here and there are
possible.

> Other distros successfully use such workflows.

Other distros are binary based. They don't have USE flags, they
don't have plenty of different compilers and environments. All they
do is package building with predefined set of options in a fixed
environment for each arch. Gentoo is much more complex than that.
You can compare only apples to apples, not apples to plane.

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko

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

[Alexander Berntsen]

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On 17/04/15 16:33, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
> The problem is double effort: previously one developer effort was 
> needed, now effort is doubled at least
You have correctly identified the problem; in order to do things
properly one must do things properly, which is more difficult than not
doing things properly.

On an unrelated side-note: I am considering a career in landscape
portrait painting instead of computer science.
- -- 
Alexander
bernalex@gentoo.org
https://secure.plaimi.net/~alexander
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Becoming a Gentoo developer?

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 10:41 AM, Alexander Berntsen
<bernalex@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> On 17/04/15 16:33, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
>> The problem is double effort: previously one developer effort was
>> needed, now effort is doubled at least
> You have correctly identified the problem; in order to do things
> properly one must do things properly, which is more difficult than not
> doing things properly.
>

"Properly" is just a matter of requirements.  Gentoo has 18k packages
right now.  In my general experience, they install fine maybe 95% of
the time.

If you said that you could increase that success rate from 95% to
99.99% by dropping to 500 packages, I'd tell you that I'd prefer
things just they way they are.

And that is the challenge.  Everything is a trade-off.  Right now we
end up dropping packages because we can't find one person to maintain
them.  With a review workflow we'll drop packages if we can't find two
people to maintain them.  I doubt that would mean merely a 50%
reduction, since our interests tend to be varied.  You'll have some
packages that are popular and there will be 10 people interested in
reviewing them.  Then you'll have many more packages that are cared
for by a single person.

-- 
Rich

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

[Justin Bronder]

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On 15/04/15 15:02 +0200, Peter Stuge wrote:
> Yanestra wrote:
> > after a talk with some of the persons present here, it appears, Gentoo
> > Linux is actually something like a Freemason lodge.
> 
> I disagree with this.
> 
> I do agree that the threshold to become a developer with write access
> to the gentoo repo is very high, which is why I'm not a developer,
> although I use Gentoo tools and have been writing ebuilds for many years.
> I don't have time for the overhead, so I just maintain my own overlay.

You know, I keep seeing people state this as if it was an established
fact, even developers themselves.  Unless the process has changed
drastically since I joined, the only lengthy part of joining is
potentially waiting for the recruitment team to catch up on their
backlog.  If someone doesn't have a couple of hours to spend filling out
the quizes and chatting with a recruiter I don't we're losing out on
much.

-- 
Justin Bronder

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

[Pacho Ramos]

El jue, 16-04-2015 a las 19:27 +0200, hasufell escribió:
[...]
> 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.
> 

I, as another Gentoo developer, encourage people willing to contribute
ebuilds to try to jump the gap if possible to allow to directly "do the
job" instead of depending on others (with commit access) to import the
ebuilds they put at some random overlays.

I am not mostly interested in "politics, PMS, EAPI and other
organizational stuff" and I still think it makes sense to become a
gentoo developer

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

[Andreas K. Huettel]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

Am Donnerstag, 16. April 2015, 19:27:13 schrieb hasufell:
>
> 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.
>

* No offense to those involved there intended, but I'm pretty sure that overall QA standards in the main tree are higher than in the sci overlay at least. 
* The KDE overlay contains mainly live ebuilds and packager prereleases not for public consumption. 
* The perl overlay is mainly a one-man project with 800 packages, and while you can certainly send as many pull requests there as you want, time would be spent in a more productive way updating the main tree perl packages. (Except that requires talking to and cooperating with the rest of the perl team. Oh bugger.)

Project overlays are typically used as staging ground for packages "in preparation" or "not yet ready for the end user". I am still not sure why you are trying to forcefully mix up this distinction.

As a side note, my personal willingness to add random overlays to my system is limited while (only as examples) there are no arch teams supervising keywording/stabilization there, no security team tracking vulnerabilities and filing GLSAs, and while there's no QA team that kicks people doing silly eclass changes.


- -- 

Andreas K. Huettel
Gentoo Linux developer 
dilfridge@gentoo.org
http://www.akhuettel.de/
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Becoming a Gentoo developer?

[Andreas K. Huettel]

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Hash: SHA512

Am Freitag, 17. April 2015, 16:41:37 schrieb Alexander Berntsen:
> 
> On an unrelated side-note: I am considering a career in landscape
> portrait painting instead of computer science.
> 

I hereby confirm that I've read this message.

- -- 

Andreas K. Huettel
Gentoo Linux developer 
dilfridge@gentoo.org
http://www.akhuettel.de/

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

[Kent Fredric]

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On 18 April 2015 at 02:33, Andrew Savchenko <bircoph@gentoo.org> wrote:

> The problem is double effort: previously one developer effort was
> needed, now effort is doubled at least: reviewers must dig into
> details how submitted code works, test it and only then commit. Now
> remember that reviewers are also developers. This means that pull
> requests will hang for weeks, months, forever due to a lack of time.
> On top of all this thinks about maintainer-needed packages or
> packages that can't be categorised into some single project, e.g.
> *-misc categories.
>


You're aware of course this is a current problem, not a prospective one,
and that penalty is paid for every single contributor who doesn't have
commit bits.

This is where any shortage of staff compounds itself.

Just our tooling is currently really poorly optimised, and so there are
needless steps every developer must take to simply have the contibuted code
available to even compare.

I'm hoping with git migration we can find some alternatives that are less
taxing.

But the reduced opinion I have is a lack of progression between overlay
contributor and gentoo dev.  For instance, a single contributor may be
tasked with performing a large number of arbitrary and time consuming
simple steps on packages in a specific category, and the nature of their
chances might be that the aggregate of those changes can be reviewed
without need to review the individual diffs.

The individual will still be isolated from unsanctioned contamination of
the tree, and a trusted gentoo dev still makes the magic happen, so the
elements of our human costs are all still there.

But the tooling can make it more effective to review such differences by
aggregation.

-- 
Kent

*KENTNL* - https://metacpan.org/author/KENTNL

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

[Kent Fredric]

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On 18 April 2015 at 07:14, Justin Bronder <jsbronder@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Unless the process has changed
> drastically since I joined, the only lengthy part of joining is
> potentially waiting for the recruitment team to catch up on their
> backlog.  If someone doesn't have a couple of hours to spend filling out
> the quizes and chatting with a recruiter I don't we're losing out on
> much.
>


With all due respect, I myself find, and apparently others may also, that
there is more to it than time investment. My impression I've garnered is
that for some reason I can't devine, some people find them incredibly easy,
and others find them soul-destroyingly hard.  I am in the latter category.
I can't profer an explanation for why this is, I really don't know, and If
I told you I would be probably making up rationalisations after the fact.

But I can state there are overlays I have *easily* invested *months* of
aggregate time into them.

I also have my doubts about the utility of the quizes being what they are
for all people, as I doubt the format serves as either an educational tool,
or a quality guard.

The best argument I have for why the quizzes being what they are is they
*require* you to engage with gentoo staff in order to get them answered,
and thus ensure you know how to ask questions.

But the content of the quizzes themselves seems easily forgotten ( And I
recall reading dev mailing list entries from time to time on the nature of
"How did you not know that, its in the quizzes!" :) )

Personally, I would see more value in a system where I learned the ropes by
doing them, not by talking about them. Because I very seldom learn anything
simply by reading and writing.

Obviously that penchant is not for all people, because different people
have different ways of learning things.

-- 
Kent

*KENTNL* - https://metacpan.org/author/KENTNL

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

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 7:30 PM, Kent Fredric <kentfredric@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The best argument I have for why the quizzes being what they are is they
> require you to engage with gentoo staff in order to get them answered, and
> thus ensure you know how to ask questions.
>

That, and that you're able to interact with other developers, and know
WHEN to ask questions.

I'll take somebody who knows they can't write an ebuild and thus
doesn't commit anything without getting it reviewed over somebody who
think's they're God's gift to Gentoo and runs scripts that tweak half
the tree without so much as a whisper on -dev in advance.  The quizzes
really are just a basic competency test combined with an interviewing
tool.  The recruiters need to assess responsibility/maturity,
communication skills, and understanding of the fundamentals.  Anybody
can read the devmanual to brush up on some detail they forget.  What
we really need is somebody who realizes that they SHOULD read the
devmanual.

I'm not dismissing technical competence, especially the fundamentals.
It just isn't the area that tends to actually get us in trouble.

And if we did go with a more review-oriented workflow, it would
actually increase the importance of the soft skills.  A reviewer isn't
just ensuring that libfoo builds - they're also coordinating with all
the reverse dependency maintainers to ensure that they don't just
break without warning.

Look at it another way.  I and just about everybody else with an @g.o
address on this list basically has root access to every Gentoo box you
use (unless you have your own rigorous QA process).  You're putting a
lot of trust in us.  We owe it to you to ensure that somebody who is
going to get upset and stick something nasty in an ebuild because
they're having a bad day doesn't have commit rights.

There are plenty of flame wars on the lists, and many differences of
opinion.  However, when it comes to the repository we really don't
have much tolerance for messing around.  Things like revert wars or
reverts of QA commits need to be treated very seriously.

So, that is part of why we have mentors/recruiters/interviews/etc.
We'd like to get to know you.

-- 
Rich

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

[hasufell]

On 04/17/2015 04:33 PM, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Apr 2015 14:50:00 +0200 hasufell wrote:
>>>> If you have followed the recent discussions about gentoos organizational
>>>> structure, review workflow and overlay situation you would know that
>>>> there is a pretty simple solution for this problem.
>>>
>>> I have followed them and I have seen no solution usable in real
>>> world.
>>>  
>>
>> The solution is that for example the ruby project assigns a few
>> reviewers (e.g. project lead) and if someone wants to bump ruby
>> packages, he submits a pull request and the assignee is going to be the
>> ruby project. What's the problem?
> 
> The problem is double effort: previously one developer effort was
> needed, now effort is doubled at least: reviewers must dig into
> details how submitted code works, test it and only then commit. Now
> remember that reviewers are also developers. This means that pull
> requests will hang for weeks, months, forever due to a lack of time.
> On top of all this thinks about maintainer-needed packages or
> packages that can't be categorised into some single project, e.g.
> *-misc categories.
> 

Not really. The depth of reviews will depend on
a) what package/subsystem is it? Is it just an end-user app, is it a
library, is it toolchain...?
b) who sent the pull request? Was it a random user or a developer I
trust? In the latter case I might just check that repoman doesn't choke
and pull the stuff in.

Currently... some gentoo projects who enforce strict reviews have very
poor workflow. Because bugzilla is completely useless for reviews,
people end up doing IRC reviews. IRC is not a proper review platform
either, especially not for drive-by contributions or people who don't
have time to read 500 lines of scrollback or whatever.

>> Do you think the usb-subsystem maintainer of the kernel is going to
>> fiddle with the cryptography subsystem all by himself? That's not the
>> case. And that's why the linux kernel workflow works: competence,
>> subsystems and trust.
> 
> As I pointed above comparision of Gentoo with Linux kernel is
> invalid. We have different resources. Another argument that
> connectivity between subsystems is much higher in the Linux kernel.
> 

It is perfectly valid. It is a huge system just like gentoo. The
workflow in detail might differ, but in the end we deliver a system that
should be coherent and work. We have little to no QA on that and our
workflow is one of the fundamental things that need to be fixed if we
want that to change.

If people say they don't care about it, that's fine. But then I'm not
sure what we need a QA team for, except for running repoman on the tree.
Unfortunately, repoman cannot tell you if an ebuild wipes your hard
drive in pkg_postinst.

>> All that is done in real world. And there are tons of tools to automated
>> such a workflow easily without dumping everything to a single mailing list.
> 
> Reviews cannot be automated. A human being is still needed to read,
> understand and test proposed code. All tools like pull requests and
> so automate only a small bit of real work.
>  

You misread. I said the WORKFLOW can be automated. There are tools to do
that. Neither bugzilla, nor CVS is one of them. We have enough google
employees here in gentoo, who should be fairly familiar with these things.

>> Global reviews will only happen when stuff is actually of global
>> importance, like non-trivial eclass changes or far-reaching technical
>> decisions.
> 
> We already have that with gentoo-dev mail list. And I'm happy with
> current solution. If you can't handle patchset from e-mails, learn
> houw to use tools, e.g. quilt.
> 

You misread again. I didn't say we lack a tool for global reviews. I
said that ebuild reviews must not happen randomly on a single mailing
list. That would be chaos.

>> Other distros successfully use such workflows.
> 
> Other distros are binary based.

Last I checked exherbo is source based and has USE flags.

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

[hasufell]

On 04/17/2015 07:15 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 10:41 AM, Alexander Berntsen
> <bernalex@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>
>> On 17/04/15 16:33, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
>>> The problem is double effort: previously one developer effort was
>>> needed, now effort is doubled at least
>> You have correctly identified the problem; in order to do things
>> properly one must do things properly, which is more difficult than not
>> doing things properly.
>>
> 
> "Properly" is just a matter of requirements.  Gentoo has 18k packages
> right now.  In my general experience, they install fine maybe 95% of
> the time.
> 

Can you back up your "general experience" with a tinderbox log? In
addition, you are decreasing "QA" to "compiles". That's not the definition.

> Right now we
> end up dropping packages because we can't find one person to maintain
> them.  With a review workflow we'll drop packages if we can't find two
> people to maintain them.

Nah, that's really not true. With a review workflow there is less need
for actual maintainers! That's the whole point.


I am really confused. I guess some people have never really been in a
different workflow than gentoo to know that it's really not
state-of-the-art. And it really isn't. Not even for distros.

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

[Patrick Lauer]

On Saturday 18 April 2015 11:15:56 hasufell wrote:
> On 04/17/2015 07:15 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 10:41 AM, Alexander Berntsen
> > 
> > <bernalex@gentoo.org> wrote:
> >> On 17/04/15 16:33, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
> >>> The problem is double effort: previously one developer effort was
> >>> needed, now effort is doubled at least
> >> 
> >> You have correctly identified the problem; in order to do things
> >> properly one must do things properly, which is more difficult than not
> >> doing things properly.
> > 
> > "Properly" is just a matter of requirements.  Gentoo has 18k packages
> > right now.  In my general experience, they install fine maybe 95% of
> > the time.
> 
> Can you back up your "general experience" with a tinderbox log? In
> addition, you are decreasing "QA" to "compiles". That's not the definition.
>

Out of all the packages that are visible (i.e. not masked, hidden by 
uninstallable dependencies, or hidden by useflag requiremenst)

For amd64 I see a build failure rate of ~2%, iow. out of ~10k packages that 
are buildable with a standard profile about 200 fail. (Last run done about half 
a year ago, it's slowly improved since I started in 2006)

So the 95% buildable sounds like a very pessimistic estimate to me.

For x86 the data looks pretty much the same, I think marginally worse.

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

[hasufell]

On 04/17/2015 11:09 PM, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
> Am Donnerstag, 16. April 2015, 19:27:13 schrieb hasufell:
> 
>> 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.
> 
> 
> * No offense to those involved there intended, but I'm pretty sure that overall QA standards in the main tree are higher than in the sci overlay at least. 

Hm. That really depends on the maintainers. I've repeatedly seen utterly
broken ebuilds in the tree that have lower quality than most user overlays.

It's hard to say something about the QA standards of the tree, because
there is no consistent workflow.

> Project overlays are typically used as staging ground for packages "in preparation" or "not yet ready for the end user". I am still not sure why you are trying to forcefully mix up this distinction.
> 

Project overlays are not just used as staging ground, but also for user
contributions. I don't think I am mixing up anything here and I was
talking about "high-quality" overlays in general. I don't really care if
it's run by a gentoo project when I contribute.

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

[Rich Freeman]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2015 at 5:15 AM, hasufell <hasufell@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On 04/17/2015 07:15 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 10:41 AM, Alexander Berntsen
>> <bernalex@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 17/04/15 16:33, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
>>>> The problem is double effort: previously one developer effort was
>>>> needed, now effort is doubled at least
>>> You have correctly identified the problem; in order to do things
>>> properly one must do things properly, which is more difficult than not
>>> doing things properly.
>>>
>>
>> "Properly" is just a matter of requirements.  Gentoo has 18k packages
>> right now.  In my general experience, they install fine maybe 95% of
>> the time.
>>
>
> Can you back up your "general experience" with a tinderbox log?

No.  Of course, having a review workflow is orthogonal to having a tinderbox.

> In addition, you are decreasing "QA" to "compiles". That's not the definition.

If it makes you happy s/install/works.  It is fairly rare to run into
problems with Gentoo packages in my experience.

>
>> Right now we
>> end up dropping packages because we can't find one person to maintain
>> them.  With a review workflow we'll drop packages if we can't find two
>> people to maintain them.
>
> Nah, that's really not true. With a review workflow there is less need
> for actual maintainers! That's the whole point.

There is more need for actual maintainers.  There is just less need
for them to have commit access to the tree.

If we instituted a policy that all commits needed to be reviewed it
isn't like there would magically be a ton of pull requests headed our
way.  Users submit patches today, and users would submit patches
tomorrow.  We're not drowning in them today, and that is unlikely to
change.  There would still be nobody committing changes to java
packages, just like today, and so on.

>
> I am really confused. I guess some people have never really been in a
> different workflow than gentoo to know that it's really not
> state-of-the-art. And it really isn't. Not even for distros.
>

I am not saying that a review workflow is bad.  I just don't see how
it fixes our actual problems, which is a lack of commits in the first
place.

You keep using the linux kernel as an example.  The kernel has 8
patches per hour and the software is high-complexity.  They need a
review workflow to vet those changes and filter out the bad ones or
get them reworked.  Most committers are very motivated to get their
code into the kernel.

Other distros have MUCH larger userbases and active maintainer
communities.  They are also much simpler since they don't support
mixing and matching random combinations of gcc, libfoo, and so on.

Gentoo just doesn't have the same volume of incoming work.

Now, if you're talking about making it easier to submit patches,
having automated testing, and so on, I'm all for that.  There are some
already working on that and it will likely become more integrated into
the core workflow when we migrate to git.  Users can already submit
pull requests using the github mirror.  We just don't force everybody
to do it that way.

-- 
Rich

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

[hasufell]

On 04/18/2015 02:35 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
>>
>> I am really confused. I guess some people have never really been in a
>> different workflow than gentoo to know that it's really not
>> state-of-the-art. And it really isn't. Not even for distros.
>>
> 
> I am not saying that a review workflow is bad.  I just don't see how
> it fixes our actual problems, which is a lack of commits in the first
> place.
> 

I think this should be so obvious by now given the past discussions
(even in this very thread) that I'm not sure if I have to repeat myself.

Having a proper review workflow/platform increases the contribution
factor of the community. And not just that.

I'm also not going to give real-world examples of such workflows in big
projects: just head over to github.

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

[Rich Freeman]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2015 at 9:03 AM, hasufell <hasufell@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> Having a proper review workflow/platform increases the contribution
> factor of the community. And not just that.

Define "contribution factor."  If you mean the number of people
writing patches vs the number of people with commit access, I'll
agree.  If you mean the absolute commit rate to the repository, I'd
say that I have no reason to think that this is true.

>
> I'm also not going to give real-world examples of such workflows in big
> projects: just head over to github.
>

We already have the same workflow in Gentoo.  Anybody can submit a
pull request to the git mirror of the main tree.  It will get reviewed
and committed.  We just don't exclude direct commits.

-- 
Rich

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

[Sergey Popov]

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17.04.2015 15:26, Andrew Savchenko пишет:
> Please point to exact projects and exact descriptions of workflow
> processes. As for now I see none globally usable. 

While not strictly refer to ebuild's writing itself, Gentoo Security
team has review workflow for publishing GLSAs. There should be at least
two votes from team members on draft GLSA to release it.


-- 
Best regards, Sergey Popov
Gentoo developer
Gentoo Desktop Effects project lead
Gentoo Quality Assurance project lead
Gentoo Proxy maintainers project lead


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