Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: My wishlist for EAPI 5

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 6:44 AM, Ciaran McCreesh
<ciaran.mccreesh@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 23 Jun 2012 10:37:38 +0000 (UTC)
> Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> wrote:
>> 1) Fact: Unfortunately, your method of argument, Ciaran, doesn't
>> endear you to a number of devs.  Some may have the impulse to reject
>> an argument simply because it comes from you.
>
> Perhaps Gentoo should be doing more to correct the attitudes of those
> developers, then.
>

This is an impression that many people get, unfortunately.  You can't
fix it by beating people up.  There are those who speak up from time
to time attempting to moderate, although to some extent this is noise
in what should be a technical discussion.

>
>> And if you /can/ get those statements, why are we still going round
>> and round with all this?
>
> That's a very good question. Why are people still blaming the PMS team
> for the lack of magical appearance of flying unicorns rather than
> making their case for the introduction of a horse?
>

Perhaps what is being missed is that THIS ISN'T A WATERFALL METHODOLOGY!!!

PMS is intended to be semi-retrospective - it is developed in parallel
with the features it documents.  It is intended to preserve standards,
to be something to refer to before finalizing PM code, and to guide
ebuild writers.  It isn't intended to be a conceptual
requirements/design spec to be included in the RFP for the coding team
in India.

So, the requirement is a reference implementation in one of the PMs.
So, the question of "who gets to decide it is easy" is simple -
whoever writes and releases the patch gets to decide.  That can be you
if you write a full PM that handles all the existing EAPIs plus
whatever is new, or demonstrate some kind of commitment to maintaining
a fork.

Face it, there are only a handful of devs here doing PM work, portage
or otherwise.  I can post all day on the list about how Gentoo OUGHT
to be able to do foo.  I can post all day about how Gentoo NEEDS to do
foo and how it is downright obvious how not doing foo ruins the
reputation of Gentoo and is going to kill us in six months.  None of
this is going to do anything unless I can convince/bribe/cajole one of
the devs working on a PM to implement foo, or, heaven-forbid, write it
myself.

Somebody asked earlier why Cirian is running the whole PMS process and
why Gentoo can't have its own GEAPI that will be peaceful and
harmonious.  My answers to that are twofold:

1.  While perhaps a different leader might give people a warmer
feeling about it, I think many of these issues are just inherent to
the nature of the problem - PM features don't write themselves.
Others might disagree, and that is fine.

2.  I don't see anybody else stepping up.  PMS is in git, so just
clone the thing and if you can convince some PM devs to follow you
there is no reason that a Gentoo dev couldn't take it over.  I suspect
that many would like to see this happen.  However, to be honest I
think that warm-and-fuzzies aside Cirian has actually done a fairly
good job with it as he is pretty passionate about PM specs.  This is a
big commitment, and what isn't needed is somebody who is going to step
in to get their favorite feature in there and then let it die.

As far as helping others to create pms paperwork goes, there is no
reason this has to fall exclusively on Cirian.  The fact that nobody
else is stepping up to help those who are new just reflects the nature
of something like this - FOSS projects tend to be weak on specs.

Bottom line - do I think Cirian might get himself further in life if
he deals with others a bit differently?  Sure.  Do I think that this
is the main thing keeping us outside of the golden land of PMS?  Not
really.

Rich