[gentoo-project] Gentoo <--> Sabayon Relation

[gentoo-project] Gentoo <--> Sabayon Relation

[René 'Necoro' Neumann]

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Hey guys,

I'd like to discuss a topic that I know much people will use for
trolling/flaming or similar. If you feel like this - get you a weapon
and cool down, but please do not answer :)

I start this discussion as I'm inspired by some posts at drobbin's blog.

The first thing:
What is the actual (official) attitude towards Sabayon?

If it is as I think it is (negative) - why is it like this? Why isn't
Sabayon treated as an official "child project"? Why is support denied
for Sabayon Users? - I know that they have a global ~$ARCH and some
not-so-nice hacks ;), but this shouldn't be a reason, as problems
related to this shouldn't be the major part...

I want just to propose, that the devs should be more open for Sabayon -
and see it as a source of ideas and software. If lxnay will finish
Entropy (and it helds what it is supposed ;)) - it will add a feature
that is often asked for and always declined as "not possible". (And
there may be other stuff ...)


Hmm ... I had several other thoughts but forgot them during the day :/.
So again: Only serious, constructive answers :)

- -- Nec

P.S.: Nope - I'm not a Sabayon User :)
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Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo <--> Sabayon Relation

[Aniruddha]

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Sabayon is considered 'close' to Gentoo, but not necessarily 'very
close' (atleast in my view). The reason for this is because Sabayon uses
its own versions of some pretty major packages (browsing through their
overlay, I see packages like grub, xorg-x11 and xorg-server to name just
a few). 

The problem is not that we (the Gentoo community) don't want to provide
official support, it's that we can't (beyond a certain point). Sabayon
provides its own version of many packages and these seem to (sometimes)
lag behind the official Gentoo tree. A case in example: The other day
someone came into #gentoo complaining that nvidia-drivers wouldn't
install with glibc-2.6. Glibc-2.6 no longer includes the nptl and
nptl-only USE flags, but the Sabayon package was still looking for them.
There's nothing the Gentoo developers can do about this - it would
require commit access to Sabayon's overlay. There's nothing much most
users can do about this - The only suggestion I could make was "ask in
#sabayon or use the package from the official tree". 

This is a simple, obvious example of a change that caused problems.
There could easily be many much more subtle problems that break systems
in a much more subtle way. Most people in #gentoo will happily provide
support for Sabayon users, but if it becomes suspect that the problem
lies in using Sabayons packages, then there's frankly nothing we can do
as we don't know how Sabayon's packages differ, with most of us being
Gentoo users, not Sabayon users. 

As for providing official support on Bugzilla, a Sabayon users first
point of call must be the Sabayon developers (via their Bugzilla). If
the Sabayon developers then determine that the problem lies in Gentoo's
tree, they should report it to the Gentoo developers (via Gentoo's
Bugzilla). This is the same way things work with Gentoo vs upstream.
Users report bugs on Gentoo's Bugzilla, if the developers determine that
the problem lies with the program itself, the problem will then be
reported to the packages developers (AKA upstream). There's a hierarchy
of responsability here, the model of which is generally followed
throughout the open source world. (To take the hierarchy further, the
packages developers may determine that the problem lies with a library
that they use, in which case they may report the bug to the library's
developers (further upstream)). 

There are two seperate questions here, with seperate answers: 
1) Can Gentoo's developers provide official support for Sabayon. The
answer is no - Sabayon users should report problems to Sabayon's
developers, who will then report the problem upstream if necessary. 
2) Can Gentoo's community provide unofficial support for Sabayon. The
answer is yes - up until the problem is determined to be (possibly)
Sabayon specific - and it does. 

To translate this on to the Debian vs Ubuntu example: If an Ubuntu user
asks for help in #debian, they'll get it, but if the Debian community
determines the problem is possibly Ubuntu specific, they'll tell the
user to go back to the Ubuntu community as there's nothing they can do.
If an Ubuntu user reports a problem to Debians bugzilla, the Debian devs
will tell them to go talk to the Ubuntu devs because there's nothing
they can do - they have no influence over the Ubuntu packages. 

Beso: 
Gentoo doesn't have kicker, an essential part of KDE in it's repository.
Right... This is exactly the problem... it does, and the differences may
cause bugs that manifest themselves outside of Kicker in subtle ways.
The Gentoo developers have looked at the differences between the
repositories, and they aren't closed minded, but they haven't got the
time to run through every problem from Sabayon users to determine
themselves if it's a problem with Gentoo or Sabayon. There is a chain of
responsability here and for Sabayon users it starts with the Sabayon
developers, just as with Ubuntu users it starts with the Ubuntu
developers. 

In summary: 

        
        
      * Sabayon is NOT Gentoo. Sabayon is CLOSE TO Gentoo. 
      * The Gentoo community does provide unofficial support for Sabayon
        users. 
      * Sabayon users should report problems to Sabayons developers, who
        will then report the problem upstream (which may or may not be
        the Gentoo developers) if necessary. 
      * If it's a Sabayon specific problem, then only people who know
        Sabayon (ie. the Sabayon community) are going to be able to help
        solve it. 



http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-541789-postdays-0-postorder-asc-highlight-sabayon-start-100.html



On Wed, 2007-08-01 at 21:22 -0700, René 'Necoro' Neumann wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Hey guys,
> 
> I'd like to discuss a topic that I know much people will use for
> trolling/flaming or similar. If you feel like this - get you a weapon
> and cool down, but please do not answer :)
> 
> I start this discussion as I'm inspired by some posts at drobbin's blog.
> 
> The first thing:
> What is the actual (official) attitude towards Sabayon?
> 
> If it is as I think it is (negative) - why is it like this? Why isn't
> Sabayon treated as an official "child project"? Why is support denied
> for Sabayon Users? - I know that they have a global ~$ARCH and some
> not-so-nice hacks ;), but this shouldn't be a reason, as problems
> related to this shouldn't be the major part...
> 
> I want just to propose, that the devs should be more open for Sabayon -
> and see it as a source of ideas and software. If lxnay will finish
> Entropy (and it helds what it is supposed ;)) - it will add a feature
> that is often asked for and always declined as "not possible". (And
> there may be other stuff ...)
> 
> 
> Hmm ... I had several other thoughts but forgot them during the day :/.
> So again: Only serious, constructive answers :)
> 
> - -- Nec
> 
> P.S.: Nope - I'm not a Sabayon User :)
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> Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
> 
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[gentoo-project] Re: Gentoo <--> Sabayon Relation

[Steve Long]

Personally I think ixnay should just become a gentoo dev and have sabayon as
his own private project (overlay, profile, make.conf) within gentoo, while
still keeping the bugzilla and forums separate. Then he could contribute
back to gentoo a lot more effectively.
[Please don't flame me, I have nfc what the politics are.]

Aniruddha described the situation perfectly, especially wrt to bug-reporting
which has to be done via sabayon before it goes upstream.


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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Gentoo <--> Sabayon Relation

[Robert Buchholz]

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On Thursday, 2. August 2007 14:29, Steve Long wrote:
> Personally I think ixnay should just become a gentoo dev and have
> sabayon as his own private project (overlay, profile, make.conf)
> within gentoo, while still keeping the bugzilla and forums separate.
> Then he could contribute back to gentoo a lot more effectively.
> [Please don't flame me, I have nfc what the politics are.]

Gentoo devs will look at bugs that affect Sabayon users when they're 
reproducible in vanilla Gentoo environments. If not, how to support 
them? This is the same with all other unofficial overlays.

As far as making ixnay a developer goes, I rather think he would not 
want to do that anyway, especially with his weird ideas to "fork away 
from [Gentoo's] bugs" [1] and give Gentoo back to drobbins.

Would having him as a developer do any good community wise? I don't 
know, but after reading [2, the last paragraphs], my guess is 'no'.

Regards,

Robert

[1] http://planet.sabayonlinux.org/?p=59
[2] 
http://blog.funtoo.org/2007/07/your-choices-with-gentoo.html#comment-4217148738650819530

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[gentoo-project] Re: Re: Gentoo <--> Sabayon Relation

[Steve Long]

Robert Buchholz wrote:
> On Thursday, 2. August 2007 14:29, Steve Long wrote:
>> Personally I think ixnay should just become a gentoo dev and have
>> sabayon as his own private project (overlay, profile, make.conf)
>> within gentoo, while still keeping the bugzilla and forums separate.
>> Then he could contribute back to gentoo a lot more effectively.
>> [Please don't flame me, I have nfc what the politics are.]
> 
> Gentoo devs will look at bugs that affect Sabayon users when they're
> reproducible in vanilla Gentoo environments. If not, how to support
> them? This is the same with all other unofficial overlays.
>
Agreed.
 
> As far as making ixnay a developer goes, I rather think he would not
> want to do that anyway, especially with his weird ideas to "fork away
> from [Gentoo's] bugs" [1] and give Gentoo back to drobbins.
>
Er i got his nick wrong it's lxnay sorry. Weird ideas don't preclude anyone
from contributing do they?

> Would having him as a developer do any good community wise? I don't
> know, but after reading [2, the last paragraphs], my guess is 'no'.
>
Yeah well I guess that's down to devrel now there are no proctors to react
in ml-time. I thought the recruitment process was supposed to take the
rough edges off? Not saying that applies to devs who've been around for
ages ofc ;) but credit to kloeri for the work he's put in over the last 2
years at least. (as well as the other work, and no I don't want to go to
Massachussets.. ;)

I agree lxnay seems a bit brash (from the cursory look around I did earlier
on from those links) and, dare I say it, rather young. I don't think
anyone's nominating him for Council or anything tho. And he certainly seems
to produce code, so why not? (If he were willing, like i say I've never had
any contact with the guy.)

I just think the rumblings of ``let's reclaim Gentoo'' are an unwelcome
distraction. Personally I'd like drobbins to come back as a dev and get
used to the new setup (with a procmail kill rule for ciaranm ofc) rather
than waste everyone's energy with another pointless fork. If drobbins
thinks the guy is true to the early spirit of Gentoo, I'll take his word
for it.

ATM sabayon seems like a leeching organisation to me, as I made clear on the
forums. It's a shame, when lxnay could just be contributing properly.
Although I did read he regularly finds and fixes bugs in ebuilds (and he
has never suggested anyone pretend to be running anything but sabayon) it
doesn't change my opinion that sabayon is a direct competitor to gentoo,
since it isn't pure binary aiui (which would make it an application of
gentoo.) Why not just bring it into the fold?


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Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo <--> Sabayon Relation

[Alec Warner]

On 8/1/07, René 'Necoro' Neumann <lists@necoro.eu> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Hey guys,
>
> I'd like to discuss a topic that I know much people will use for
> trolling/flaming or similar. If you feel like this - get you a weapon
> and cool down, but please do not answer :)
>
> I start this discussion as I'm inspired by some posts at drobbin's blog.
>
> The first thing:
> What is the actual (official) attitude towards Sabayon?

What is this 'official' stuff?
I don't think Gentoo has a body that makes decisions on 'officiality'
and I don't think anyone cares anyway.  Some people think Sabayon is
good, others do not.  I don't think you will get an 'official
attitude', you will get the attitude of whomever you have asked.

>
> If it is as I think it is (negative) - why is it like this? Why isn't
> Sabayon treated as an official "child project"? Why is support denied
> for Sabayon Users? - I know that they have a global ~$ARCH and some
> not-so-nice hacks ;), but this shouldn't be a reason, as problems
> related to this shouldn't be the major part...

Sabayon (in my experience) has badly chosen settings in
/etc/make.conf.  Those settings by default make the packages in
sabayon unsupported in a typical gentoo environment (ie you are using
gentoo but have those settings, good luck getting support from many
people).

Support in #gentoo is typically denied to sabayon users because in our
experience it's rarely a gentoo problem.  It's usually a problem with
the sabayon overlay or build settings.  The number of times I've
helped someone for 15 or 20 minutes only to find out they are using
sabayon and not gentoo and holy crap they have this overlay and horrid
build settings.  Hey surprise, your packages didn't build.  Maybe you
should use sane settings! -> makes me grr ;)

I believe you can always get support for it in the Unsupported Software forum.

So to sum up, we don't support it because it has really bad make.conf
settings (CFLAGS/LDFLAGS).  It would be like saying 'we support you
using -ffast-math'.  Which is false, we will tell you to rebuild your
system without -ffast-math.  If you come to me with a sabayon problem,
I'll tell you to rebuild your system with sane build flags unless you
have good evidence that those flags are not the problem.  Most Sabayon
users are not prepared to do that.

>
> I want just to propose, that the devs should be more open for Sabayon -
> and see it as a source of ideas and software. If lxnay will finish
> Entropy (and it helds what it is supposed ;)) - it will add a feature
> that is often asked for and always declined as "not possible". (And
> there may be other stuff ...)
>
>
> Hmm ... I had several other thoughts but forgot them during the day :/.
> So again: Only serious, constructive answers :)
>
> - -- Nec
>
> P.S.: Nope - I'm not a Sabayon User :)
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFGsVwP4UOg/zhYFuARAgJ7AJ4ly6n/vGhKxFby7HpvFdNyEGw96ACdF6VV
> kHM9MZIKcpQrtDS6zb37IGs=
> =JwcP
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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>
>
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[gentoo-project] Re: Gentoo <--> Sabayon Relation

[Steve Long]

Alec Warner wrote:

> So to sum up, we don't support it because it has really bad make.conf
> settings (CFLAGS/LDFLAGS).  It would be like saying 'we support you
> using -ffast-math'.  Which is false, we will tell you to rebuild your
> system without -ffast-math.  If you come to me with a sabayon problem,
> I'll tell you to rebuild your system with sane build flags unless you
> have good evidence that those flags are not the problem.  Most Sabayon
> users are not prepared to do that.
> 
I think that's just crazy on the part of sabayon. It makes no sense at all
for them to use unsupported settings. For a start, half the fun of gentoo
is setting your own make.conf.. it's the part of the install that I most
loved, and you can see it on IRC when someone gets to that stage (they go
all quiet for a while. ;) Secondly, you'd think they'd want users to be
able to get support from gentoo without any grief. USE flags, fine, but
CFLAGS/LDFLAGS?! Just compile it with march=i686 and allow the user to set
their own, iff they want. (Minimal settings make it more likely the binary
will be available from the binhost.)

I don't understand why he didn't just do a binary distro; that's what gentoo
is setup to make (as a meta-distro.) The only reason I can think of is lack
of resources, and that's one of the reasons I think of it as leeching,
since gentoo infra is used to supply portage and distfiles. The other thing
is, there probably wasn't such good support for overlays when he started
(I'm guessing.) Nowadays, there are loads of em, and many herds have their
own overlays.

Sunrise is scary as there's so many ebuilds in the tree, and you're warned
on the site about them not being official. Using eg the haskell overlay is
a different thing, since it's an overlay the devs use to test stuff
specific to one language. If you're interested in that language, you might
want the latest version (akin to running unstable for a package you
follow.) Awareness of these types of overlay is much lower than of sunrise.

What I am trying to say (in my long-winded way) is that Gentoo is constantly
changing, and arguments from 2 or 3 years ago (or even longer for drobbins)
don't really apply now. The principles might, but if people are getting
involved again, they need to get reacquainted with the new Gentoo.


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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Gentoo <--> Sabayon Relation

[Alec Warner]

On 8/4/07, Steve Long <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:
> Alec Warner wrote:
>
> > So to sum up, we don't support it because it has really bad make.conf
> > settings (CFLAGS/LDFLAGS).  It would be like saying 'we support you
> > using -ffast-math'.  Which is false, we will tell you to rebuild your
> > system without -ffast-math.  If you come to me with a sabayon problem,
> > I'll tell you to rebuild your system with sane build flags unless you
> > have good evidence that those flags are not the problem.  Most Sabayon
> > users are not prepared to do that.
> >
>
> I don't understand why he didn't just do a binary distro; that's what gentoo
> is setup to make (as a meta-distro.) The only reason I can think of is lack
> of resources, and that's one of the reasons I think of it as leeching,
> since gentoo infra is used to supply portage and distfiles. The other thing
> is, there probably wasn't such good support for overlays when he started
> (I'm guessing.) Nowadays, there are loads of em, and many herds have their
> own overlays.

I would say because our binary repository format currently isn't
exactly...what I'd call good.  The code has improved a lot and I
recall solar working on new stuff for distribution, I am unsure if it
has reached stable.
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