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On Sat, 2002-12-21 at 08:58, Sven Vermeulen wrote: |
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> On Sat, Dec 21, 2002 at 05:35:19PM +0100, M. Zuelsdorff wrote: |
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> > I am following the the discussion in the gentoo-dev group for more than a |
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> > year now. All I see is "a problem with this" and "a problem with that". |
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> > Some days ago, something even appeared to be "really fucked up". My |
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> > question: When do you expect Gentoo to become a final usable release? |
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> |
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> It is very normal that you frequently see problems arise on the mailinglist |
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> but rarely successtories. This is because of human nature: we will swiftly |
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> ask/seek for help (and the Gentoo Mailinglists are a good place to ask for |
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> help) but rarely just mail to tell it works... |
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> |
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> Think of it: if you emerge 10 tools, and 9 of them work flawlessly, you won't |
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> mail the mailinglist about those 9 tools do you? No, you're going to mail |
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> about the 10th tool that doesn't work. |
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You've just highlighted one of the biggest problems with Gentoo: manual |
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problem discovery and resolution. When a package breaks, someone must |
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(1) manually discover it, (2) search mailing lists for Gentoo and the |
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application, (3) search the forums for Gentoo and the application, (4) |
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attempt reasonable diagnostics to insure the problem is not just with |
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their system, (5) if they are competent they might try to solve the |
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problem, and (6) share their problem with the community. |
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Currently, the latest gtkspell ebuild is broken for me. I assume it |
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worked for the person who modified it last. This hidden breakage |
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remains until manually discovered and shared. |
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Installing Java for Galeon for 1.4rc1, was a nightmare. The user |
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documentation tells you are on your own if you use the latest sun-jdk. |
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Yet, the latest is all that will work. So users go on to try and fail |
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with sun-jdk-1.3. The user docs should be authorative or have warnings |
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that they are not. |
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Checking the mailing lists is hard if the problem is not new. Search |
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engines don't sort by most recent articles first. Additionally, threads |
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break on month boundries, making following a thread not much fun. |
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BTW, checking the forums did revealed a solution for Java. |
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I've only mentioned a couple of the problems I had, but I ran into many |
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more that I haven't had time to properly investigate and report. :( |
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It seems to me, to make Gentoo a painless solution, supporting so much |
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customization, an automated problem detection system must be put in |
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place. For example, Mozilla has tinderboxs that report when certain |
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builds break. Additionally, some sort of automated user feedback system |
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would be good too. This system might report the configuration for |
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compile failures/successes and package test results as well. |
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Unfortunately, the nature of source based installs (slow turn around |
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time) exacerbates user fustration and makes problem diagnostics and |
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resolution time consuming. |
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Hopefully some attention will be applied to this with the benefits of a |
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higher quality distribution and less wasted time for everyone. |
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Sticking with Gentoo :), |
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-Arthur |
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-- |
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