Re: [gentoo-dev] When will KDE 3.5 be marked as stable?

[m h]

> If we had an official place where people could complain about ebuilds
> not being stabilized, then I have a feeling most developers would avoid
> it like the plague.  Stuff like this is along the same lines as the
> "bump it!!!eleventy-one11!11" bugs which get filed the minute there is a
> new release of some program.  We tend to hate that, and there isn't much
> that could be done other than closing them with prejudice.
>

I'm the OT.  So I apologize to all devs whose precious time I have
wasted.  This post has probably now consumed about 10x as much time as
it should've by now.  I totally realize that it is probably super
annoying to get requests for bumping to stable.  And it wasn't my
intention at all to put pressure on anyone to bump KDE.   I was only
curious as to what was holding it up.

That was my bad for phrasing my question in such a sort manner (not
following the "howto ask smart questions" protocol).  I figured since,
I'm seeing posts about 2.6.16 going stable in "2-3 weeks" and
questions about firefox 1.5, then KDE would be kosher as well (since
it is arguable on of the most important apps on the linux desktop).

>
> >> I would like to point out that it was you who flamed me for apparently
> >> saying RTFM, when in fact if you read my original email, I did nothing
> >> of the sort.
> >
> > You gave a logical RTFM. You're being literal with words when the
> > meaning of what you said should be fairly clear. You didn't want to
> > answer the question, so you flamed the person who asked instead of
> > answering or defering to a more helpful individual.
>
> Not really.  I should have actually pointed out that there is no (good)
> place for such queries originally, but I was doing about 10 things at
> once, and just sent the typical "don't send offtopic stuff to the
> gentoo-dev list" reply.  Look back through the archives...this is pretty
> standard.
>
>
> >> I merely pointed out what should have been clear to anyone
> >> that signed up for this list, that it is not for whining about arch
> >> keywording.
> >
> > Not everyone is like you. There are all sorts of different people out
> > there who process information in a lot of different ways. Without a
> > stated correct place for asking questions about keywording, it wouldn't
> > be hard to rationalise that the proper place is the dev mailing list.
>
> Except that it isn't the proper place.  It is for discussion of
> technical matters concerning the development of Gentoo.  The closest
> place that might be sort of on-topic is the gentoo-desktop list, but I
> generally don't recommend that list because it seems like nobody bothers
> to answer questions there for the most part.  I think the problem is
> that the RightPeople(TM) (meaning all the members of the teams for each
> desktop herd) probably aren't subscribed there.
>

Sorry I'm not on the desktop list and since I was seeing other posts
about marking the kernel and firefox as stable, I figured kde fit in
as well.  My bad.  One solution to naggers like me may be to have
dedicated per package wiki/homepages where a status is shown (much
like Trac releases).  Or at least link to pending bugs.  Though I
realize that this is probably just more overhead for devs who are
already too busy and would rather just code.

>
> > You say it should be obvious like it's fact. Not everything is obvious
> > to everyone--Not everyone is a Steve or Stephanie. They may interpret
> > conveyed information in different ways and the ambiguity does not help
> > at all.
>
> It should be obvious to anybody who bothered to read the description for
> this mailing list before signing up.  I can't fix ignorance.

Thanks for the compliment ;)
"General Gentoo developer discussion mailing list" is the
description...  I guess my post was not general enough. ;)

>
>
> > There's a reason devs rarely answer questions. Devs should do what they
> > do best, code and fix problems according to SE principles. If you really
> > want to answer questions, go ahead, but if you don't want to be helpful,
> > don't say anything. Someone else who does want to will chime in with a
> > helpful response.
>
> My reponse was helpful.  I guarantee you (unless that person is really
> dense) that they won't use this list to complain about stable keywording
> again.  Furthermore, any currently subscribed list user who didn't know
> before will certainly know now.
>
Hmmm, I really wasn't trying to complain about the keywording of KDE. 
Sorry if it came out that way.  I really just wanted a status update
and again, since I saw others I figured it would be ok.  In the future
I will do the following:

 * Re-read "howto ask a smart question"
 * Find a mailing list that looks appropriate by the description
 * Spam that mailing list
 * Pending no response, find the dev and email them personally

For the benefit of us dense users, please let me know if this works.

-matt

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