Re: [gentoo-dev] creating ebuilds

[Jon Portnoy]

On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 02:36:53AM -0500, Allen Parker wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 05, 2004 at 11:05:45PM -0800, Robert Cole wrote:
> > > I would like to start creating ebuilds for products and maintaining them
> > but
> > > I'm a little concerned that my contributions won't be accepted. Will I
> > be
> > > wasting my time asking to be a maintainer for a couple of ebuilds I
> > create
> > > and get them in the tree?
> > >
> >
> > Generally, when someone asks, my response is an automatic no.
> >
> > Prove yourself and you'll be picked up as a dev.
> Sorry, this seems a bit elitist. :(

Why, because I don't want to pick up every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a 
couple ebuilds and give them access to the tree, which means access to 
deliver executable data to your system and tens if not hundreds of 
thousands of others? I'm sorry if it's elitist, but someone who's just 
maintaining a couple of ebuilds in most cases does not need CVS access 
and someone who hasn't proven themselves _definitely_ does not need 
CVS access.

Now, if important packages are going unmaintained, _then_ new devs are 
recruited to maintain them. What I'm getting at is that if, say, courier 
(just as an example) is going unmaintained, I (as a recruiter) or other 
devs (as new dev sponsors) will look for people who have a history of 
valuable contributions and ask them to be developers.

None of this means you can't contribute to Gentoo or that contributors 
have no chance of becoming developers. Fundamentally it means I find it 
very difficult to trust people who straight out ask for CVS access. 
Would you do differently in my position?

>
> Avenj, as I recently was interested in submitting ebuilds myself. Could we
> possibly come up with a quick and easy system for devs to pop in, check a
> list of submitted ebuilds, grab ones that look interesting to them, test to
> see if they build/self-destruct, mark them as ~ARCH (for ARCH they can test
> on), either clear the initial listing and slap them into the tree or kick it
> back to the user?

This is the function bugzilla is supposed to serve. Why would a second 
system be any more efficient?

>
> Personally, I found it to be a pain in the rear to see 1 1/2 yr old ebuilds
> relating to the packages I was developing ebuilds for in bugzilla, yet with
> information so stale as to be stinking the place up. I think that there are
> a lot of things that could be offered to Gentoo users without too much
> hassle by other Gentoo users as long as dev says "ok, that sounds fun." I
> mean, I got passed back and forth from hardened to general and back a few
> times and it was all because the devs reviewing my bug(s) didn't understand
> the packages.
>
> I may not know C/C++ very well (minimal understanding at most), so I
> wouldn't be able to "fix" something that was broken via diff, but I sure as
> heck have the computing power to do 100s of compiles :-D and thoroughly test
> certain things before I put them live on my OWN production machines.
> Basically, I'm not a programmer, but I can *still* write a darned good
> ebuild with the proper help (thx Spyderous, obz and others in #gentoo-dev).
> Simply because I can't program, I can't be a dev... does that mean I can't
> do thorough package mangling/testing? Not really... In fact, I've been told,
> that with most things, if anyone can break it, I can :-D

No, but it does mean you probably don't need CVS access at this time.


-- 
Jon Portnoy
avenj/irc.freenode.net

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