[gentoo-science] Scientific Gentoo reorg

[George Shapovalov <george@gentoo.org>]

Hi everybody.

Sorry for crossposting, but many people whom I want to catch with this are not 
on gentoo-science. For the same reason lets keep this initial discussion 
here, on -dev. If we need to expand, lets take it to the gentoo-science, but 
then I would expect everybody interested to sign up ;).

Gentoo Science has been relatively quiet, even though we are making a steady 
progress on many fronts, but lately a few things has caught my attention and 
I think we can do better if create a bit more structure.

At present we count 10 categories containing 309 packages (wow! Considering 
that it all started with some 20 packages I put in sci back when we did not 
have a two-tier categories yet, quite impressive :)). However looking at 
herds.xml I see only 10 devs listed, which just cannot be true (considering, 
according to my experience with bugzilla, that majority of these packages are 
actually maintained). The real situation is that many devs are quietly 
supporting their own packages but are reluctant to join the sci team 
officially. And it is this situation that I want to address.

I see one reasonable rationale for this relctance to join: people are 
afraid "to get too much on theirs hands" by signing up. In reality the 
gentoo-science mailing list is really low on traffic (quite a relief in 
present times ;)), but nonetheless the sheer amount of packages may be 
frightening. Therefore I am proposing to recognize the fact that we 
(Scientific Gentoo project) became big and act accordingly:

1. We need more herds. The easiest possibility is to simply split them 
accordingly to categories. However, with 10 categories, this may be an 
overkill, or, with some categories having >50 packages an underkill, or 
simply may not correspond to maintenance reality (it will definitely fail on 
sci-libs for example). It is hard to tell without seing who does what, so I 
am going to ask for some feedback here (see below).

2. Should we create some subprojects? This really will have to be discussed in 
more detail when people respond and join corresponding teams I guess. 
However, while at it we may as well become a top-level project of our own. 
Right now Scientific Gentoo is under Dektop, which is at the very least 
strange (but all the other options back then were even less fitting..)

3. Mail aliases. Right now we have sci@g.o, which we should keep as an all 
encompassing alias for announcements or, well, I am not sure yet what else, 
but time will tell. In addition we should create new ones, one per herd. If 
by chance there are people interested in seeing *all* the bugs (which I 
somehow doubt, but theoretically?), we can reuse sci@g.o for that as well..

So, right now I would like to ask for the feedback on the following:

Q1) I would like to hear about the reasons why people are afraid to join the 
sci team. You may respond to me personally or raise it on the list, but 
please let me/us know about the problems in any case, so that we may address 
them!

Q2) Please let me know if you are supporting or occasionally touching some 
package under sci-* and, assuming we create more herds, which herd it should 
belong to (just make it up as you see fit right now) and whether you would be 
willing to add yourself to the alias of that herd or join some subteam if we 
create one. I will collect the responces and then compile a proposal for the 
new structure.

Q3) Not relevant to this restructuring, but always usefull: if you know of 
some package that you think should really go under sci-something, please let 
us know!

And to finish it all up :)
Q4) If you are a user but would like to be involved more actively, or you have 
to run that particular package for your work but it sits in bugzilla for ages 
and no developer seems sensible enough to take it up, please let us know too. 
Best of all - subscribe to that gentoo-scie mailing list and ask somebody to 
mentor you. By the time it will be over we should have a new structure, so 
you won't end up with the whole 300+ sci packages on your hands (this was 
holding some people with whom I discussed it too).

This should be enough to start with, so, bring it on! :)

George
-- 
gentoo-science@gentoo.org mailing list