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It has become abundantly clear that distribution maintainers should have |
| 2 |
as few patches as possible. Patches waste time due to duplicate work, |
| 3 |
resources (portage disk space and bandwidth), and as the Debian project |
| 4 |
recently found out after a major vulnerability was discovered in the |
| 5 |
OpenSSH packages (see http://www.milw0rm.com/exploits/6094, and |
| 6 |
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/30276 among others), they can become a |
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source of great embarrassment, and liability since they are not nearly |
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so well audited as code in heavily used mainstream projects (an |
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unintentional Cathedral if you will). I therefore propose the following |
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changes: |
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|
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Patches in the metadata.xml should have some sort of status tracking for |
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each patch, repoman should flag any that don't, and warn on any that |
| 14 |
have not been submitted upstream unless the status is signed off on by a |
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herd leader (such as Gentoo specific patches). This would provide visual |
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feedback for users and developers with regard to a pretty important |
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metric on how successful Gentoo is at getting patches pushed back to |
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developers. |
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|
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Developers who consistantly clear a large quantity of patches upstream |
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should also be recognized in the Gentoo Monthly Newsletter, and |
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otherwise as appropriate. |
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Obviously the software needs to work, and therefore we need patches, but |
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Gentoo has not done enough to date to get them pushed upstream. Lets |
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look at some cringeworthy statistics on outstanding patches. (NB these |
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are only patches in portage, and not patches which don't meet portage's |
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maximum size) |
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|
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app-accessibility 48 app-admin 178 |
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app-antivirus 10 app-arch 101 |
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app-backup 55 app-benchmarks 20 |
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app-cdr 58 app-crypt 90 |
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app-dicts 28 app-doc 26 |
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app-editors 90 app-emacs 51 |
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app-emulation 186 app-forensics 21 |
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app-i18n 77 app-laptop 23 |
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app-misc 181 app-mobilephone 34 |
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app-office 64 app-pda 50 |
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app-portage 36 app-shells 91 |
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app-text 334 app-vim 13 |
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app-xemacs 4 dev-ada 1 |
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dev-cpp 30 dev-db 141 |
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dev-dotnet 27 dev-embedded 17 |
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dev-games 27 dev-haskell 12 |
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dev-java 264 dev-lang 313 |
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dev-libs 391 dev-lisp 112 |
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dev-ml 15 dev-perl 78 |
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dev-php 6 dev-php5 11 |
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dev-python 202 dev-ruby 63 |
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dev-scheme 37 dev-tcltk 33 |
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dev-tex 24 dev-tinyos 3 |
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dev-util 328 distfiles 26 |
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eclass 21 games-action 58 |
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games-arcade 76 games-board 58 |
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games-emulation 88 games-engines 8 |
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games-fps 58 games-kids 9 |
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games-misc 15 games-mud 19 |
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games-puzzle 65 games-roguelike 26 |
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games-rpg 15 games-server 7 |
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games-simulation 14 games-sports 17 |
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games-strategy 54 games-util 31 |
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gnome-base 45 gnome-extra 60 |
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gnustep-apps 22 gnustep-base 3 |
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gnustep-libs 9 kde-base 146 |
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kde-misc 52 mail-client 71 |
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mail-filter 49 mail-mta 21 |
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media-fonts 5 media-gfx 188 |
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media-libs 494 media-plugins 273 |
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media-radio 2 media-sound 411 |
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media-tv 44 media-video 253 |
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metadata 72 net-analyzer 213 |
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net-dialup 121 net-dns 45 |
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net-firewall 33 net-fs 47 |
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net-ftp 76 net-im 91 |
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net-irc 68 net-libs 111 |
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net-mail 113 net-misc 428 |
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net-nds 11 net-news 16 |
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net-nntp 21 net-p2p 67 |
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net-print 49 net-proxy 53 |
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net-voip 9 net-wireless 89 |
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net-www 14 net-zope 6 |
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perl-core 2 rox-base 11 |
| 83 |
rox-extra 6 sci-astronomy 32 |
| 84 |
sci-biology 32 sci-calculators 31 |
| 85 |
sci-chemistry 104 sci-electronics 21 |
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