Re: [gentoo-dev] Sets in the tree

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 4:10 AM, Pacho Ramos <pacho@g.o> wrote:
> El mié, 14-08-2013 a las 23:53 +0800, Patrick Lauer escribió:
> [...]
>> Well, it should reflect reality.
>>
>> PMS is still broken as much as it does not reflect the state of portage
>> before PMS was written, and we've had to patch it up a few times to make
>> it coherent, plus it is still lacking half the things that would make it
>> useful as a standard.
>>
>> Your academic interpretation of standard as a platonic ideal
>> disconnected from reality serves no purpose.
>>
>
> On this topic I agree with Patrick: I don't fully understand why things
> (like in_iuse from eutils.eclass) are missing from PMS. If that applies
> to more features that were forgotten when writing PMS, we have a
> problem :(

Just picking a random spot to reply in this mess, but it could apply
to many other posts.

If somebody proposes a change and the PMS team is holding it up for an
inappropriate reason, escalate it - don't stew over it and blow up on
the mailing lists twice a year.

However, from what I've seen in the past most "problems with PMS" are
like most "problems with Gentoo" - they're things that people wish
were different but which nobody bothers to fix.  Nobody is getting
paid to make PMS better, just as nobody is being paid to work on the
dozen security GLEPs that came up 47 posts ago.  When things don't
happen in Gentoo 9 times out of 10 it is because nobody has put in the
time to make them happen.  In the 1 time out of 10 where some kind of
bickering actually holds things up, that is the time to bring issues
to the project lead or to the Council to get resolved.

I won't speak for anybody but from my observations in the past in most
cases where somebody rushes to defend portage against the evil forces
of PMS we have a 75 post flamewar and then one of the portage
maintainers steps up and basically explains that there is nothing
wrong and things with PMS are going fine.

I'm all for the Council being more proactive, but that doesn't mean
asking infra to BCC us on every email sent through gentoo so that we
can find and act on every one-off issue that two devs have a
disagreement on.  If there is a problem bring it up.  We call for
agenda items every month, and we already agreed that if issues are
more critical that we would act on them in-between meetings if
appropriate (just file a bug and/or ping the alias).

However, if your request is going to be that we scrap PMS, honestly, I
wouldn't waste your (and our) time - mine is only one vote but frankly
I don't see it happening.  By all means complain if the PMS team
unfairly rejects a proposal, or make suggestions as to ways to improve
how PMS is run.  However, your suggested improvements need to come
along with people willing to implement them.  You can't just say "I
wish this team that I have no interest in helping out worked
differently" unless you can persuade them to go along with it.

Oh, and as far as devrel leads treating people like children go - my
sense is that most devs would like to see devrel taking a more active
lead in dealing with nonsense on the lists, not less.  If things get
out of hand they can be dealt with, but frankly the main thing that
seems to be out of hand here are personal attacks on the list.  After
that huge thread on -core a few months ago I think that we need to
have more direct intervention when inappropriate behavior on the lists
takes place - otherwise we just have an atmosphere where everybody
feels like they have PTS.  A wrist slap on the lists is better than
rage-quit or bans.

Rich