Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo World Domination. a 10 step guide (Gentoo reports)

[Luis Francisco Araujo]

Chris Gianelloni wrote:
>>> - Project status reports once a month for every project
>> Totally agree on this one!
>
> OK.
>
> I'll give you Release Engineering's "status reports" for September,
> October, and November:
>
> September: taking a well-deserved break
> October: taking a well-deserved break
> November: taking a well-deserved break
>
> How about other projects that rely on things like upstream's release
> cycle?  What about projects that just maintain ebuilds?
>
> Here's the games team's "status reports" for every month:
>
> "Fixed more bugs, added more packages, cleaned up some ebuilds."
>
> Now, perhaps what everyone would like, instead, would be status reports
> *where necessary* from certain projects?
>
> In fact, the council has been discussing asking a few projects about the
> status on some of their tasks.  The main reason for this is for
> communications purposes.  Basically, we'd just get a "Hey, where are you
> at on $x?" response from the teams.
>
> I don't *want* to drown projects in bureaucracy and paperwork.  I want
> them to *accomplish* things, instead.
>

I think the problem with reports is "how often would they be posted?" , 
and exactly "what kind of info would they contain?".

I propose the following:

To post a Gentoo Project report every six months, (yes, accompanying 
every Gentoo release, *be careful*, i am not saying you releng guys 
should take care of this).

This report would be like a way of ChangeLog for our Gentoo project, 
which could contain the following:

- Herds news: Each herd could write a 1-2 page report about the main 
changes they have done in these last 6 months. Including news about 
interesting packages added, new eclasses for sustaining the herd 
packages, any useful comment for the users of the herds, etc etc.

- Project news: This could include projects like releng, pr, userel. 
Which could post general news about the main things happening for these 
last 6 months too. For example, releng could post about some new 
techniques involved to release this new Gentoo release; which packages 
were more problematic for building it and why? , in other words, the 
kind of info our users (and devel too) would be interested on.

Now, this kind of report could be very very useful, both for users as 
for our developers. And making its release every 6 months, i think the 
time and what-to-comment problem shouldn't be a concern at all.

I already can hear some of you saying "No, i don't want to write 
anything for X  or Y!" ; fine, just don't do it. Nobody would be forced 
to do it. This would be a paper for those herds/projects/developers 
willing to communicate their work during the past 6 months to our 
community, and which could become in a very informative source to give a 
general overview of what it is going on in Gentoo land.

"Fine , i won't write anything .. but .. mm .. Who would read this 
anyway?" , i hear this question too ... Sorry, i can't give you names of 
who are going to read this. But i think a big portion of our community 
would do it, if we post it on gentoo.org every 6 months surely someone 
would pick it and read it, don't doubt it. (myself included.)

"Ok .. mmm fine .. mm.. wait, this is the same than GWN, isnt this?"; no 
it isn't ; i don't see a common pattern of Herds/Projects reports 
(check, it is report, *not* news) released every week on GWN; and that's 
because, GWN is for general weekly news .. mmmm that is very evidently 
on its name indeed.

Suggestions and constructive criticisms are welcome.

Regards,


-- 


Luis F. Araujo "araujo at gentoo.org"
Gentoo Linux


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