Re: [gentoo-dev] [[e-mail]: [Bug 322157] [mail-filter/procmail] new ebuild + autocreate maildirs]

[Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto]

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Nirbheek,

thanks for writing such a well thought-out and comprehensive reply to
Enrico. I agree with all the points you raised.

On 11-07-2010 10:28, Nirbheek Chauhan wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 3:23 PM, Enrico Weigelt <weigelt@×××××.de> wrote:
>> * Nirbheek Chauhan <nirbheek@g.o> schrieb:
>>> I don't see how these various distros can be made to agree with
>>> each other and I certainly can't see them using a common tarball
>>> source.
>>
>> Thats not even necessary. They just should use the infrastructure,
>> as described in my paper. So everyone can easily set up automatic
>> notifications, cherry-pick, etc, etc.
>>
>
> Why should we? I am *yet* to see a single reason for us to change how
> we work other than "please use this since I've been putting a lot of
> effort into it".

Enrico,

just because you decided to "offer" some service, it in no way "forces
us" to accept it.

>>> On a technical level, it's got serious security, trust, and
>>> redundancy problems.
>>
>> Git makes that very easy ;-p
>>
>
> No, it does not. The security problems come because you are the single
> point of failure. The trust problems come because we have no reason to
> trust you. The redundancy problems come because if your hosting goes
> down or you lose interest, we're left high and dry. Git has nothing to
> do with any of this.

These 3 issues are in my view the most important issues regarding your
proposal and I agree with Nirbheek's reply.
With your proposal, you're expecting us (distro maintainers) to put our
trust and our users safety in you and your service - what made you think
we would or should do it? Besides, what significant gain would we have
to justify trusting your service?

>>> It is extremely important that distros collaborate in some form
>>> when it comes to patches that *can* be shared,
>>
>> If we're doing a good job (my generic fixes instead of distro-
>> specfic dirty hacks) about 99% can be shared ;-p
>>
>
> I'd advise you to take a look at the sort of patching Ubuntu/Debian
> does, and then revisit that figure. You'll find it more along the
> lines of 30%.
>
>
>>> A practical solution to the problem of patch sharing is to
>>> have a website with a search interface for upstream source
>>> tarballs, which can display all the patches that various
>>> distros apply, as well as a download link for the patchsets
>>> (hotlinked to the distro files where possible).
>>
>> Too complicated, and actually would not help me a single bit.
>
> Help *you*? I thought this was about helping the distros. If your
> proposal is not about making our work easier, please don't waste our
> time.
>
>>> Distro packagers are much more comfortable with downloading
>>> patchsets from a foreign source than complete tarballs.
>>
>> man git-format-patch ;-p
>>
>
> So why don't you submit that to bugzilla?

Please don't assume replies are based solely on people not knowing the
tools (git in this case).

>>> I know you have spent a lot of time on this already, but please
>>> understand it from where we stand. We're short on manpower, and
>>> there's no real benefits of shifting our tarball source; OTOH there
>>> are major disadvantages too unless we pitch in with manpower
>>> ourselves. And honestly speaking, that manpower is better spent making
>>> stuff work locally.
>>
>> Well, Gentoo is short of manpower ? hmm, perhaps some should think
>> about why so many folks are resigning and so few fresh coming in
>> (at least according to this lists traffic) ;-O

This type of argument when you're trying to convince others to use your
service is in the least a disservice to your purpose.

> I'm beginning to think that you're not taking my honest advice very seriously.
>
>>> Please consider the "patch-website" idea above. We definitely need
>>> someone to code it up, gather the source-package to distro patches
>>> mappings, and advertise it.
>>
>> Actually, I once had somehing in that area, called "comprehensive
>> source database", but unfurtinately it got lost in an disk array
>> crash a few years ago, and I didnt find the time to rewrite it yet.
>>
>> Meanwhile I dont need it anymore, since I gave up maintaining
>> plaintext patches in favour of git. And that makes my daily works
>> _much_ easier.
>>
>
> You don't need to maintain **anything** manually if you code the
> website properly. That's the whole point. You get major benefits with
> minimal long-term work which can be done by a single person in their
> free time.
>
> This job is easily automated to simply aggregate links to patches
> which all the distros manually publish themselves. For Gentoo, it's
> the ebuilds; for Debian/Ubuntu, they actually publish the diffs[1];
> Fedora keeps its patches in a common CVS repo[2], etc etc. Once the
> website is up and running, maintenance is minimal, and can be done by
> a single person looking at it in their free time.
>
> 1. See packages.(debian|ubuntu).(org|com)
> 2. cvs.fedoraproject.org/viewvc/
>

- -- 
Regards,

Jorge Vicetto (jmbsvicetto) - jmbsvicetto at gentoo dot org
Gentoo- forums / Userrel / Devrel / KDE / Elections
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