Re: [gentoo-project] About herds and their non-existant use

[Marius Mauch <genone@gentoo.org>]

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Moving the discussion to -dev per leios request.

On Wed, 21 May 2008 23:42:19 +0200
Marius Mauch <genone@gentoo.org> wrote:

> As this topic jus came up in #-dev, and most people there seemed to
> agree with me I thought it might be worth to bring this topic up
> again. The topic is that I think that the whole 'herd' concept we're
> using is a huge mess and should be removed. Now before eveyone starts
> screaming, lets look at what this concept actually is, as many people
> are quite confused by it:
> 
> 1) a herd is a group of packages (not a group of people)
> 2) the herds.xml file is used to assign people and mail aliases as
> maintainers of a given herd. Unfortuntely the syntax there give
> the impression that those people/mail aliases actually form the herd
> 3) the <herd> tag in metadata.xml is used to assign a package to a
> certain group.
> 4) the <maintainer> tag in metadata.xml can be used to assign
> individual maintainers for a package in addition to/instead of the
> herd maintainers
> 5) the combination of 2), 3) and 4) is used to determine the
> maintainers of a given package
> 
> Now most people will be familiar with 5) to some degree, and that is
> actually the only valid use case for the herd concept that I'm aware
> of. Or has anyone some use case where you'd like to know what herd a
> package belongs to, but don't care about by whom that herd is
> maintained?
> If we can agree that this is the only real use case for the herd
> concept, then I think the concept is quite useless as it's just a
> redundant layer of indirection. You could just list mail aliases
> directly as maintainers, without having to consult herds.xml first.
> 
> This would have a number of benefits:
> - you no longer have to look at herds.xml to determine the actual
> maintainers of a given package (as herd-name and associated mail alias
> don't always match)
> - it would simplify bug assignment rules, as the current case where a
> package has both a <herd> and a <maintainer> tag in metadata.xml no
> longer exists
> - eliminate confusion about what a herd actually is
> - only have one location where members of a given team are listed,
> currently it's possible and quite likely that herds.xml and the mail
> alias files get out of sync
> - as others said in #-dev: it makes sense ;)
> 
> Now there of course are a few things to consider:
> - obviously, some tools, docs and processes would have to be updated,
> but that's always the case with changes
> - someone said that it might no longer be obvious if a package is
> maintained by an individual or a group of people. But is that really
> necessary? And it's not even obvious now, as some herds are maintained
> by a single person.
> - when I brought this up several months ago it was mentioned that
> sometimes people want to be on the mail alias of a herd, but don't
> want to be listed as members (and therefore be responsible). But that
> can likely be just implemented by some kind of blacklist in the
> relevant tools instead of using this whole indirection layer all the
> time.
> 
> So, what do you think? Is there some benefit in keeping this concept,
> or can we live without it and make life simpler for everyone?
> 
> Marius
> 
> -- 
> Public Key at http://www.genone.de/info/gpg-key.pub
> 
> In the beginning, there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be
> Light.' And there was still nothing, but you could see a bit better.


-- 
Public Key at http://www.genone.de/info/gpg-key.pub

In the beginning, there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be
Light.' And there was still nothing, but you could see a bit better.

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