[gentoo-dev] Re: DistroWatch and Gentoo packages: status quo and future

[Duncan]

Sebastian Pipping posted on Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:00:03 +0200 as excerpted:

> Duncan wrote:
>> [L]et's get some context here.  layman's no difficulty at all, really,
>> when compared to the ordinary stuff we expect Gentoo users to do all
>> the time.
>
> I think you forget about the learning curve: Gentoo users are not born
> as Gentoo users.  They are coming from other distros (say Debian or
> Ubuntu).

Not forgetting that, but perhaps forgetting how "unordinary" my own 
experience was.  I came from Mandrake, but researched Gentoo well enough 
that I was already explaining portage basics based on the material in the 
Handbook, etc, on the user list (and reading the dev list), before I even 
had Gentoo installed.

I like to think that if I can do it, everybody can, but regardless of 
whether they /can/ or not, it's a fact that not everybody /does/, as 
demonstrated by the fact that people were asking the questions I was 
answering.

I /do/ sometimes forget /that/ end of it, that for whatever reason, not 
everybody chooses to read the handbook, etc, even if it's ultimately only 
making the job of sysadmining their own Gentoo boxen an order of 
magnitude harder than it should be.

> For me it was unmasking that confused me a lot in the beginning. There
> is three different kinds, one is not in "the books" afaik and it's no
> fun to me to do.  I guess without autounmask by now I would be so
> frustrated to not use Gentoo anymore.

You have me wondering now what's "not in the books."  I'd guess the three 
types of masking must be (entirely) unkeyworded, ~arch keyworded, and 
hard-masked (package.mask-ed), but again, unless that material has 
actually been /removed/ from the handbook since 2004, I was actually 
explaining all that to others even from my still Mandrake system, so 
it's /certainly/ in the books!

And I don't need for autounmask, tho I do run ~arch.  But the thing is, 
if people are running enough individual ~arch packages so handling it 
manually is difficult enough they need a tool for it, from my viewpoint, 
they should seriously consider running ~arch anyway, since stable is 
tested, and ~arch is somewhat tested, but nobody much tests a half-and-
half system nor could it be practically so in any case since there's just 
too many millions of variants there to test, so trying to run such a half-
and-half system is really asking for more trouble than trying to run a 
full ~arch system.

But with a few small refinements over the years as Gentoo and its FLOSS 
environment have changed, again, that's very close to the same position 
and explanation I took from the very beginning, while I was still working 
on my first install.

> Seriously, stuff like the layman setup mess is another tiny reason
> keeping our user base smaller than needed, keeping our recruiting rates
> down.

I guess I just don't see it.  There's a reason the packages on the 
overlays aren't yet part of the tree, because in general, either the 
ebuilds (if not the upstream packages) aren't yet mature enough to be in-
tree (at least unmasked, in-tree), or they're community ebuilds, not 
Gentoo-dev vetted ones.  Keeping that distinction, for the protection of 
both Gentoo and its users, is a deliberate policy.  Those who are mature 
enough to handle the risks of overlays can get them with little problem, 
while those newbies who self-evidently are NOT mature enough in their 
Gentoo usage to properly handle the risk (or it'd not be a problem for 
them in the first place since they'd be comfortable with the tools and 
how to use them), are by deliberate policy, kept away from the additional 
risk and danger.

Other than minor refinements here or there, I just don't see how that can 
or should be changed, unless we're simply deciding that policy is wrong-
headed, so damn the torpedoes headed for our users, full steam ahead, let 
them at them!

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman