Re: [gentoo-user] Is Gentoo wiping out Gtk 2 support from packages that support it?

[Stroller <stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk>]

On 7 July 2011, at 08:30, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Thursday 07 July 2011 10:12:43 微菜 did opine thusly:
>> Devs can do what ever they think are right. Don't argue with them
>> unless you pay them. Want gtk2 support? Put your ebuild in your
>> personal overlay.
> 
> Gentoo users have developed a certain expectation over the years, 
> whereby devs will take user needs seriously and go to extra-ordinary 
> lengths to support everything under the sun.
> 
> That's what Gentoo does. That's how the system by and large works, and 
> that's what users have come to expect. It's unreasonable for a dev to 
> think they can willy-nilly change that based SOLELY on their own 
> opinion, as the greater community was not built around that behaviour.


LOL!

I'm afraid I have come to the expectation that a Gentoo dev's opinion is unswayable, like a mighty oak. If a Gentoo dev decides "this is the best way to do things" then you really have no chance of convincing him otherwise, IME. 

I have come to this conclusion over several years of bug reports and reading the gentoo-dev mailing list (though not recently). Anyone trying to appeal a bug report to that list for further discussion (as I have once done myself, as others have done and Nicos has kinda done here) will be characterised as "whining about a dev's decision" and told off for it.

Ubuntu users complain sometimes about similar things (such as Unity), about their bug reports being marked as WONTFIX, but their devs seem generally politer and more ready to explain their reasons than Gentoo devs. Discussing with a Gentoo dev has often felt to me like striking a hard rock wall.

Whilst I think Nicos is probably right, I have to say that I don't think he has done himself any favours here with comments #8 & #12. "I will reopen this [bug]. And I will keep reopening it indefinitely. Every time you close it, I will open it again." After being told by the dev not to! I mean, I think the problem is (probably) the dev's stubbornness, but that ain't going to win any friends and influence people.

A better thing to do, for instance, might have been to open another bug based on Nico's assertion that "gnome-mplayer looks ugly under KDE". You could add a screenshot for that, and even state that the fix is reinstating the GTK2 USE flag. But my experience is that arguing with a rock doesn't get you anywhere.

Stroller.



[1] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=374057#c8