[gentoo-dev] Things one could be upset about

[Patrick Lauer]

Here's a random unsorted list of things that it would make sense to be upset 
about. Some issues that people have successfully ignored for a few years ...

In no way exhaustive list, feel free to remember a dozen things I forgot ;)
(If you suggest other things please try to offer constructive criticism,
i.e. possible strategies to fix issues ... whining by itself is not very 
useful) 

* stable genkernel still doesn't enable all useful kernel features
   e.g. accounting statistics are absent, so iotop doesn't work ootb
   See for example #442936 (from 2012 ?!)
   Fix: Stable newer versions

* stage3 still enables bindist in make.conf
   See https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=473332
   Causes random breakage of tools like wget/curl, etc.
   Fix: poke releng until they stop being silly 

* AutoRepoman catches on average maybe 2 user-visible breakages.
    Mostly removing stable on HPPA ;)
    Fix: Make repoman faster (tree-wide scans take ~2 CPU-hours)
    Fix: Remind people that using repoman is not optional

* Portage is too slow
    On 'small' hardware emerge -upNDv @world can take enough time 
    to make updates prohibitive - on an 800Mhz machine it took me 
    about 3 days to figure out a solution to some silly blockers due to the
    very slow change test cycle
    Fix: Do some profiling and un-refactoring to remove useless code
    Fix: Set up a reference system (CI) to catch future regressions

* Stage3 archives are too fat
    See https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=531632
    We're now shipping three python versions and glib for extra fun!
    Fix: Motivate releng to stop being silly

* AutoRepoman catches issues, but no one but me seems to care
    Fix: Remind people of http://packages.gentooexperimental.org/repoman-current-issues.txt
    Fix: Make it yell louder? It currently reports on IRC to #gentoo-{bugs,qa}

* AutoRepoman still runs on my hardware
    Fix: Remind infra of https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=484064

* mail archives have been broken since 2012
    Fix: get infra to either fix it, or provide enough information that it can 
    be fixed. See https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=424647#c27

* git.overlays.gentoo.org only partially functional (web interface / cgit 
down)

* euscan doesn't run on infra hardware
    Fix: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=453886

* libreoffice-bin isn't built on infra hardware
    Fix: Remind infra to set up a build environment for that

* Some stable bugs are left alone for months
   See e.g. https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=485632
   Fix: Have more people work on stable bugs
   Fix: Motivate people to file more stable bugs (continuous updates)

* Updates from very old installs are still difficult
   Fix: Collect stage3 archives and tree snapshots maybe every 3 months apart
     then update from one snapshot to the next. Possibly fix upgrade bugs 
     retroactively in the snapshots and automate the process


It'd be nice to have such things fixed, but alas, many rely on someone else to 
respond. And for some there's no 'easy' solution.

But they can all be fixed.

Let's not tolerate mediocrity.

Take care,

Patrick