Re: [gentoo-dev] Herds suck, fix them

[Jakub Moc]

Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-06-15 at 17:43 +0200, Jakub Moc wrote:
>>> Say it with me.
>>>
>>> Herd == packages
>>> Team == people
>> There's no such thing like <team> in metadata.xml, that's what we've
>> been talking about for ~1 day now.
>
> Maybe it's what you erroneously have been trying to say that I've been
> saying, but it definitely isn't what "we" have been talking about.  The
> "team" is *implied* by the herd.  If you email the alias for the herd,
> you get the team.  It really is that simple.

Once again - the team is *only* implied by the herd if the team does
_agree_ that the particular package in question should belong to the
herd. If they don't, they it implies nothing.

So, what we have been talking about is that you shouldn't encourage
people to stick something into herd, like <herd>perl</herd> just because
it's perl app (or to restate what you've mentioned, to stick
<herd>games</herd> there just because it's a game. People won't like it,
so don't force you games team practice on others, it's not how that
mostly works outside of games herd/team.

To quote ciaranm, since I obviously can't express myself the way you
could understand:

<quote>
The issue is the old metastructure definition, which a) encourages
dumping packages upon herds that don't want them and b) means you can't
say "assign it to the vim herd". Which is rather annoying, because in
practice the people that maintain a particular herd call themselves a
herd, and the team / herd distinction is not usually made.
</quote>

> Let's look at this another way.  There are a few packages which belong
> to the livecd herd.  There is no livecd team, there is just me.  The
> only person on the herd alias for livecd is me.  That doesn't make *me*
> the livecd herd.  It makes the *packages* the livecd herd and *me* the
> *maintainer*.

And again, what's this distinction good for? Well, it's useless unless
you are trying to enforce something like what you've suggested here
before, i.e.

<quote>
I see nothing wrong with listing perl as the herd, *only* if
they have themselves as the maintainer.
</quote>

Well of course it's wrong b/c people that don't give a damn about the
thing you've just dumped on them will get the bugs! And will need to
either remove themselves from metadata.xml or if they don't do it, will
finally end up maintaining the thing once the guy who's kindly dumped it
on them went MIA/retired.


-- 

jakub