Re: Notify people about empty herds (Was: Re: [gentoo-dev] FTR: media-optical@g.o has no developers)

[Jeroen Roovers]

On Thu, 3 Jun 2010 22:35:04 +0200
Ben de Groot <yngwin@g.o> wrote:

> Also, there are herds that have several members, but none of them is
> really active (games, most of the desktop-* herds, etc.). This also
> leads to users being discouraged because the bugs they file are left
> ignored.
>
> This needs a structural solution. I think we need a team to
> systematically look at open bugs and to notify the community of such
> problematic herds. I imagine this would be a QA subproject.

That would basically be a task other than bug-wranglers, but jakub used
to do all this and I do it sometimes, among a few others who either
just scratch an itch or take a general interest. Maybe the
bug-wranglers project can be extended since it at least has some active
people (not just developers), but as it now stands there are again 150
unassigned bugs after only a week (up from ~40 since the last
reassignment run I believe).

"Calling in" QA as such usually isn't really beneficial.

> Then we also need some structure to redirect some dev love to these
> problematic areas. We need to advertise these needs more, to get
> trusted users to proxy-maintain. We need to streamline the recruitment
> process to make it easier for people who want to volunteer to become
> devs. And I could go on for a while. There are a lot of areas where
> Gentoo has a lot of room for improvement, and they all interlock.

All these problems seem to come down to the fact that we're
understaffed in most departments.

Setting up yet another project isn't going to help much. Just looking
at open bugs (bugzilla can help you figure out which bugs might need
someone's particular attention). What might help right now is look at
the herds.xml data and combining that with activity rates of the
developers in all herds. Herds with few developers and lots of open
bugs is something you could calculate and filter down into a monthly or
weekly report you send to a mailing list (probably dev-announce?).

> I believe we need to formulate a vision of what we want Gentoo to be,
> and then develop strategies of how to get there. Having a team that
> systematically looks at the state of herds as well as open bugs is
> --in my opinion-- a crucial first step to adress some of the
> structural problems that have plagued Gentoo for years.

Do you mean we should redefine what Gentoo is about, to satisfy the lack
of active developers? Bring down the number of packages? Or address the
staff shortage? That last one is rather old, as recruiters have been
clamouring for help for years now.


Regards,
     jer