Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev <gentoo-dev@l.g.o>
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Concept of Projects - How to proceed?
Date: Sun, 07 Jun 2020 10:43:36
Message-Id: CAGfcS_=Q2Much8jxwo4VifVnLd3+t-1h8JL8kCwg+6pOijZ95g@mail.gmail.com
In Reply to: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Concept of Projects - How to proceed? by Jonas Stein
1 On Sat, Jun 6, 2020 at 7:49 PM Jonas Stein <jstein@g.o> wrote:
2 >
3 > our concept of "Projects" (Herds in the past) maintaining packages has
4 > several problems.
5
6 You might want to search the list archives as many of the issues
7 you've raised have been discussed extensively. There was never a
8 complete push to fix things, but most project removals/etc have been
9 along the lines of what has been discussed.
10
11 While tangential, I'll point out that there have been similar
12 discussions around appropriate uses of eclasses and there are some
13 loose parallels for when eclasses make sense.
14
15 > * Many projects are too heterogeneous
16 > Projects should only maintain either
17 > a) many similar packages such as libraries (like Perl, Python) or
18 > b) very few strong correlated packages (like KDE, Kernel, Xfce)
19 >
20 > It makes no sense to group packages by usage as in
21 > Science, Games, Theology, Sound, Netmon, Video, Electronics...
22
23 ...graphics...
24
25 This is the gist of the outcome of previous discussions. Projects
26 make sense when developers actually work TOGETHER to maintain things.
27 Nobody who works on qt is going to just upgrade one component of qt
28 without talking to the other maintainers. It makes sense for those
29 packages to be managed by a project.
30
31 Historically a lot of projects worked more like "tags" as an
32 alternative way of grouping packages other than categories. While
33 tags are a great idea projects are a terrible way to implement them.
34
35 > I think we should first find a consent about the following questions
36 > before someone deletes projects.
37
38 In general I'm a fan of announcing things like this BEFORE doing them.
39 However, I don't think they need pre-approval when they make sense.
40 If anything we haven't been doing it often enough.
41
42 I don't see any point in bringing back graphics though - if somebody
43 who actually intends to lead such a project wants to speak up on that
44 they should certainly do so, but it sounds like it is just a vestige
45 of an old herd that probably never worked as an actual team.
46
47 People reading the thread shouldn't think that this has anything to do
48 with the importance of the individual packages. This is purely about
49 how devs are organized around them.
50
51 Some of what you wrote was more about our larger meta-structure and
52 how devs maintain packages in general. That has also been discussed
53 quite a bit, like having a core group of devs who don't maintain any
54 individual packages and all they do is QA pull requests from a much
55 larger pool of individuals who do care about packages. There are a
56 lot of pros and cons to that and I won't rehash the previous
57 discussions here. That isn't to discourage anybody from doing so - I
58 mainly just want to point out that this stuff is in the archives.
59
60 --
61 Rich

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Concept of Projects - How to proceed? Kent Fredric <kentnl@g.o>