Re: [gentoo-project] rfc: separate /usr preparation vote

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Sun, Aug 18, 2013 at 2:32 AM, Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>>>> On Sat, 17 Aug 2013, William Hubbs wrote:
>
>>       The Council agrees that all preparations for dropping support
>> for separate /usr without an initramfs or similar boot mechanism are
>> complete.
>
> Why such a hurry? We have voted that we would "eventually" drop
> support, and in the log you can find that we were talking about a
> timeframe of six months.
>
> I suggest that we revisit the topic no earlier than in six months from
> now.

Personally I was thinking WITHIN the next six months, not taking no
action for six months and then restarting the debate.

I think williamh is perfectly within his rights to suggest that we're
ready to go.  Anybody who has a problem with his suggestion is also
within their rights to state a specific objection (something
actionable).

I just don't see any reason for waiting, at least not right now.  If
the argument is that we should give users some period of time to
prepare, then we should be sending out some kind of specific news item
telling them what preparations to make and THEN waiting.

That said, it wouldn't hurt to maybe discuss on-list some of the
potential actions the council might take.

1.  Obviously if we don't think documentation/etc is ready then no
action gets taken at all (we leave the current decision in-place).

If we think docs/etc are in place there are a few different positions
we could take:

2.  We could ask that news be sent out before the first significant
change to / and there be some time period before taking action on it.
(ie, we trust maintainer discretion)

3.  We could ask that maintainers of packages in / get council
approval for each move to /usr with at least brief justification and a
proposed communication plan.  (ie, we don't trust maintainer
discretion)

4.  We could tell maintainers not to make deliberate changes without
individual approval, but they could WONTFIX bugs that point out small
regressions/etc without approval.  (ie let's not open the floodgates
yet, but we can relieve some pressure on maintainers and let entropy
take its course)

5.  With #3-4 at some point the council would decide that they've
approved enough changes that further approvals are moot, and the
requirement for pre-approval would be rescinded.

Here is my personal take:  The stated reason for dropping separate
/usr support without an initramfs/etc is that this is a config that
upstreams are steadily moving away from.  I get that, and I don't want
maintainers to have to bend over backwards to keep it working.  That
said, I also don't see a need to make huge overnight changes (if a
maintainer thinks this is the only way to reduce their workload,
please speak up).  I think that this should probably be handled like
the kde4 transition, or the gnome-systemd transition.  That is, we
provide a reasonable amount of support for the status quo until that
state of affairs just isn't tenable.

If anybody feels we're already at the point where supporting the
status quo is untenable by all means speak up.  I don't want to make
maintainers work harder, but I also don't want to force changes
earlier than necessary without some reason for it.

That said, those who feel that we're not ready need to state a
specific actionable objection.  "The docs aren't ready" isn't specific
or actionable.  "The handbook should say xyz in this section" or "the
dracut guide should specify that the usrmount module should be enabled
if you have a separate /usr and how" are.

Finally, I could see the /usr merge as a POSSIBLE reason to move
things sooner.  If somebody wants to propose some plan to make that
happen they should do so, and we can debate it on this list and so on.
 However, I don't see any value in moving a bunch of stuff around
purely for the sake of a /usr merge when there isn't any plan to
finish the work.  If anybody is thinking about that being the driver
they need to have a plan that actually gets us to the end goal, and of
course we need to agree that this is even a goal we want to have.

Rich