Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev-announce

From: Sebastian Pipping <sping@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev-announce@l.g.o, gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-dev-announce] Why a betagarden overlay
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2011 23:33:24
Message-Id: 4D7FF656.2050803@gentoo.org
1 Hello!
2
3
4 First: If betagarden were a normal overlay, I would not be writing about
5 it here.
6
7 If you're in a hurry just skip the introduction and jump down to section
8 "Betagarden overlay".
9
10
11 Introduction
12 ============
13 The betagarden overlay has been around for a while. I always wanted to
14 write about its purpose and invite you to collaboration but I haven't
15 got to it before.
16
17 I understand betagarden as a third place supplementing the Gentoo main
18 tree (sometimes known as "gentoo-x86" or "portage") and the special
19 overlay of Project Sunrise [1]. It fills a gap that these other two
20 repositories leave open. Let's have a look:
21
22
23 Gentoo Main tree
24 ----------------
25 - Post-publishing review
26 - Territorial write access: Gentoo Developers (only)
27 - Full write access: Gentoo QA maybe?
28 - High quality standards
29
30 sunrise overlay
31 ---------------
32 - Pre-publishing review
33 - Reduced write access: Anyone passing a simple test [2]
34 - Full write access: Project Sunrise developers (only)
35 - High quality standards
36
37
38 From these lists a few things can be observed:
39
40 1. Both trees require high quality from ebuilds. This includes
41 - Full integration with Gentoo (menu entries, init scripts, etc.)
42 - Cleaning the ebuild
43 - Support for LDFLAGS
44 - ...
45
46 2. Gentoo developers who are not fully committed to sunrise
47 do not have full write access to it
48
49
50 --> Wouldn't it be nice to have a place where polishing is optional
51 (as long as the ebuilds are still safe) with more liberal write
52 access?
53
54 But there's another group of repositories that I would also like to have
55 a look at:
56
57
58 Gentoo developer overlays
59 -------------------------
60 When you go to <http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/> you see them
61 instantly - most Gentoo devs have one:
62
63 dev/aballier.git Developer overlay Alexis Ballier
64 dev/alexxy.git Developer overlay Alexey Shvetsov
65 dev/anarchy.git Developer overlay Jory Pratt
66 dev/angelos.git Developer overlay Christoph Mende
67 [..]
68
69 Many of these overlays currently combine two groups of ebuilds:
70
71 - Stuff useful to themselves, only
72
73 - Stuff useful to a wider audience
74 (that they didn't feel like adding to the Gentoo main tree)
75
76
77 With such a mix it often makes no sense for somebody else to keep that
78 overlay installed over time.
79
80 --> Wouldn't it be nice to have the stuff useful to others in a more
81 central place (and reduce your developer to stuff that basically is
82 only interesting to you)?
83
84 Hollow and I (sping) have been trying to do that with our overlays:
85 moving stuff useful to others over to betagarden, a shared overlay.
86
87
88
89 Betagarden overlay
90 ==================
91 So now that I have shared my view on the Gentoo main tree, the sunrise
92 overlay and developer overlays let me summarize how betagarden fits in:
93
94 - Full write access to all Gentoo Developers
95 That means more freedom than in the main tree or sunrise.
96
97 - Reduced (but essential) quality standards
98 (hence the "beta" in "betagarden")
99
100 - Keeping really useful stuff off the developer overlays
101
102
103 How to join
104 -----------
105 All devs have write access to betagarden already.
106
107 1. Clone git+ssh://git@×××××××××××××××××××.org/proj/betagarden.git
108
109 2. Add yourself to the betagarden@g.o alias:
110 # ssh dev.gentoo.org
111 # nano -w /var/mail/alias/misc/betagarden
112
113 3. Start adding (or moving over existing) ebuilds
114
115 If you have trouble pushing commits please contact <overlays@g.o>.
116
117 In bugzilla, you can assign bugs to <betagarden@g.o> by now.
118
119
120 Expected criticism
121 ------------------
122 I expect some of you to be worried: does that mean people stop adding
123 quality ebuilds to the Gentoo main tree and move on to betagarden?
124
125 No. If an ebuild is really important it belongs into the main tree. In
126 that case someone will take the time to ensure high quality standards
127 and move it from betagarden to the main tree.
128
129
130 I hope some of you do see something good in this project.
131
132 Thanks for your interest,
133
134
135
136 Sebastian
137
138
139 [1] http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/sunrise
140 [2] http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/sunrise/wiki/HowToCommit#Password