Re: [gentoo-server] Random thoughts about portage maintenance

[Darren Kirby]

quoth the Jose Gonzalez Gomez:
> I've been thinking about the problem stated a few days ago about portage
> maintenance... first of all, I'm not on the developer list, so I don'tknow
> if many of the assumptions I'm making here are right or wrong, so a big
> "correct me if I'm wrong" must be assumed everywhere... well, here it
> goes...
>
> THE PROBLEM
>
> Portage is slowly getting out of date. Some facts: portage has 7600
> packages, and more than 80.000 files, but only 200 devs. This is clearly
> insufficient to maintain such a system.
>
> DEVS RESPONSABILITIES
>
> The Gentoo devs have the following responsabilities (correct me if I'm
> wrong): - Mantain a structure giving support for Gentoo
> - Develop portage (the core of Gentoo)
> - Enhance the current platform with the creation of new projects specific
> to Gentoo
> - Create and mantain ebuilds
> - Create and mantain Gentoo specific patches for those ebuilds
> - Resolve bugs created at bugs.gentoo.org
>
> MY RANDOM THOUGHTS
>
> A. REGISTERED USERS / TESTERS
> Well, first of all, open source software is all about participation, but
> how many Gentoo users would want to become a developer? Probably few. We
> all have college, works, families, hobbies,... and Gentoo would be another
> thing stealing our precious time, so how to get more developers? Does
> Gentoo really need more developers?
>
> Let's see... from my point of view, there are "core" responsabilities and
> "secondary" responsabilities. I mean that the real heart of Gentoo is
> basically portage, so I think core developers should concentrate on further
> developing and enhancing the Gentoo base, while leaving the "mundane" tasks
> of creating ebuilds and resolving bugs to other people, or maybe a second
> level of developers. Anyway we still have the problem of few developers
> dealing with a lot of ebuilds.
>
> I think (again correct me if I'm wrong) that a great part of the ebuild
> creation and maintenance task consist of testing the ebuilds, so they
> install the software properly, and there are no problems once that software
> is installed. Then that ebuild enters the unstable branch, and if there are
> no further problems, the ebuild become stable... and here is where I think
> the system may be greatly improved:
>
> Let's say Gentoo creates new posts: registered users and/or registered
> testers. Ok, maybe there are few out there wanting to become a developer,
> but there are tons of users out there continously installing and testing
> Gentoo. Why don't take advantage of that? The developer task may take a lot
> of time, and may be not rewarded, but testing new software is something
> that people uses to do while they're studying, working, or even playing at
> home. Let's make them take a step further: become a registered user or
> tester that reports directly to Gentoo their success or failure, instead of
> just writing to some list saying they have a problem, or they've been
> successful while installing and using an ebuild.
>
> I would do this per package. I mean a registered user/tester would be
> associated with a set of packages she uses on a daily basis. Testers would
> have an associated rating of reliability (I don't know if this is the best
> word for this) and would be notified whenever a new version of the package
> comes out. So I see the process somewhat like this:
>
> 1. Somebody (dev or not) writes a new ebuild
> 2. If not submitted by a dev, a dev checks the ebuild for form defects (bad
> CVS tags, USE flags unproperly used,...) and admits or rejects the ebuild
> 3. Registered testers are notified of it
> 4. During testing period, registered testers report success or failure,
> weighed up based on their reliability rating. The ebuild may change,
> resetting the testing period.
> 5. Once the testing period has finished, if the average of success reports
> weighed up with reliability ratings is greater that a threshold, accept the
> ebuild and put it in the unstable branch, maybe repeating the process with
> registered users.
>
> I guess this is what is done right now at bugzilla in an informal way, but
> I think that formalizing this process would have a few benefits:
>
> 1. Right now (at least in my case) people know of new ebuilds in bugzilla
> when they actively search for a package in bugzilla. The automatic notify
> process would greatly increase the testing of new ebuilds just created in
> bugzilla, instead of limiting this testing to people that just has found
> the bug 2. A tester has a much lower responsability and time dedication
> than a developer, so people in their daily jobs could develop this role
> 3. The testing work of a developer could be delegated on these testers, and
> in turn they could use their time for more important things, just having
> the responsability of reviewing reports and taking a decission based on
> that.
>
> One of these testers could eventually become an ebuild submitter, or even a
> package mantainer.
>
> B. AUTOMATIC INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
> Another thing that I think could be interesting is some form of automated
> sending of information about installed packages in test/production
> environments. Registered users / testers could install a tool in their
> systems that would send information to some kind of server about their
> platform, gcc/glibc versions and options, use flags, installed packages,
> ... That information would then be used by some data mining techniques to
> find information about bugs, taking into account reports from the tester,
> so the system could relate success/failure reports with the state of the
> system in a particular moment. Maybe even this tool could also be used to
> send the reports, so the information is included in it.
>
>
> Well, that's all by now, best regards
> Jose

That's a great idea. Speaking for myself, I would fit perfectly into this 
'tester' profile. I don't have the technical ability to be a dev (ie, I can't 
program in C), but I can certainly write and test ebuilds. This is a way that 
all the non-hardcore techies can give something back to Gentoo.

And anything that would speed up new/updated ebuilds through bugzilla has got 
to be a Good Thing...

-d 
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