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So, this topic came up again. Well its been a while, more than usual half a |
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year :). |
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Lots have been said about the stalls and the importance of roper maintaince, |
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but I want to chime in on another aspect of this issue - the one that's |
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causing this (and other similar in the past) discussion[s]. |
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|
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On Tuesday 06 January 2004 07:45, Robert Cole wrote: |
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> On Tue January 06 2004 4:44 am, Paul de Vrieze wrote: |
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> > This is certainly not a matter of broken ebuilds or instability it is |
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> > against protection of malice (i.e. criminal behaviour). Besides that |
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> > there must be quality mechanisms in place, but we must protect agains |
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> > criminal behaviour first. |
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> |
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> I personally feel the fewer that have access to cvs the better. I and I |
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> believe Allen are advocating a better middle layer. One that eases the |
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> shoulders of the cvs devs and one that encourages more participation. |
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> Currently it doesn't appear that you can have that participation without |
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> cvs access. |
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|
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I should say I agree with both sides on many points. However the problem is |
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real: |
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We fant to provide maximum flexibility, (that partially means lots of |
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packages) but we want them all be high-quality. |
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Lets face it, Gentoo is triving mostly because of active user involvment, |
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users, who not only [help] fix the bugs and produce new features, but also |
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submit new ebuilds. That's in their nature and I am afraid we cannot separate |
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these things. We cannot say - we want the part of our users that helps us fix |
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the bugs, but we do not want one that's submitting ebuilds :). The roots are |
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deep and psychological, as in what constitutes satisfaction. But I'll leave |
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this topic and go back to the question at hand. |
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|
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Gentoo is growing and we are gonna be faced with larger and larger number of |
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new submissions. |
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So, we can lock the tree and only accept a handfull of new packages now and |
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then. Well, I do not think this will work in the long run: |
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1. This puts a lot of stress on user-developer relations, and it shows in a |
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regular outbursts of this nature. Plus the locked distro is effectively a |
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dead one - people will start leaving it eventually.. |
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2. Its too late anyway (actually being like that for a long time already). We |
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are at 100-200 devs (realistically ~100 "maintainers" as there are many |
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doc/infrastructure/other people) but we have 4000+ packages and 7000+ ebuilds |
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(may be even more by now). The ratio is already unhealthy and has been like |
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that for a long time. It did not grow too fast lately because we were |
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stalling somewhat on new submissions, but continuing to do so will increase |
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strain and user unhappiness :(. |
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|
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Another approach: grow the developer base. Not good either - we would have to |
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get like 1000 more devs onboard and, eventually, more close to 10000. Plus, |
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if we would want to match the speed of ebuild submissions (we are taking |
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people in, what I am referring to here is accepting them in "quickly enough") |
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we would not be able to do proper trining. So either forget QA or this will |
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persist for a bit more. But then growing into 10000 arear has a good chances |
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of turning Gentoo into something slow and not very responsive (perhaps other |
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that to the maintained ebuilds needs). |
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|
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So, here I would like to stress the importance of user involvment once again |
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and point out that effectively we do rely on it. |
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I've suggested a possible solution to this dilemma a long time ago (see |
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#1523). It hasn'e been GLEPped yet, because I was (am) bisy with other, |
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"regular" stuff and because this was suggested loong before GLEPs ever came |
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around :). But it will have to if we come to a stage of reall agreement of |
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what we want to do. Plus it has to be reworked a lot since then.. |
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|
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That description is based around the idea of "splitting" the tree (via the |
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means of KEYWORDS for example, but lots have changed since, we might want |
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another way now) into "official" (with its further stable/testing) and "user" |
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areas (considered less stable by portage. This makes these submissions |
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automatically visible and easy to install for those who care, but retains |
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them invisible (and perhaps even unfetchable) for those who dont). |
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|
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While there was support behind it, there was an opposition as well. One real |
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and I think most important objection is along the lines 'do we really want to |
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stress our servers by all these "unsupported" ebuilds?' |
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|
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Nonetheless all is not that bad. We already have a bunch of suggested features |
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implemented. Other parts are still in progress - for example |
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gentoo-stable/stats was up shortly then it ceased to function, but I believe |
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there is an ongoing work on that project "to get it right" this time. |
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portage-ng has tied resources lately as well, but it is necessary in order to |
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provide a way to get all the necessary hooks in.. |
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|
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In short I think it is possible to resolve this problem and build even more |
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versatile system in the end, but this is a lot of work on top of the pending |
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changes to the ongoing projects.. And of course this requires a clear support |
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of the idea in community (and takes a lot of push to actually accomplish |
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things). |
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|
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George |
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|
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|
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-- |
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