Re: [gentoo-catalyst] catalyst enhancement

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Mon, 2007-04-23 at 23:39 +0200, Ramon van Alteren wrote:
> This puzzles me, if making a tool easier to use for it's users isn't a
> valid reason for hacking at the tool, then what is ?

Well, I know I have said this before, but I'll say it again here.  We
develop catalyst for our own usage first, and everyone else second.  If
it doesn't directly impact Release Engineering, it immediately gets a
back seat to changes that we need/want.  When I said "you" here, I meant
you specifically, not any other form of you.

> It was a dual request, if nobody on list would be using the
> functionality I'll maintain a patch outside the tree for our benefit.

This was really my question.  Would other people use it?

One of the biggest problems that we have had with catalyst is people
that want to change catalyst to meet their own specific needs and our
need to balance things out so that we don't end up with unused code
paths.  Having a single, consistent interface for the spec files allows
for much simpler support on a product that we honestly wished we didn't
have to support, at all.  If the change is something that lots of people
would likely use, such as the stage4 target, then we will add it even if
we don't use it ourselves.  Our general rule is don't change anything
unless there is a really good reason.  As I said, simply making things
slightly more convenient isn't really a good enough reason, IMO, unless
a lot of people would use the functionality, and even then, it would
depend on code availability and maintainability.  Of course, writing up
a patch resolves the first issue, but the second would still remain.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation