Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo World Domination. a 10 step guide

[Thomas Cort]

On 10/4/06, Luca Longinotti <chtekk@g.o> wrote:

> People come and go, I still see Gentoo going forward, packages still get
> updated, work gets done

The number of opened bugs has always been higher than the number of
closed bugs in the bug stats listed in every 2006 GWN. How is this
'going forward'? It seems to me like we are falling behind.

> > - Cut the number of packages in half (put the removed ebuilds in
> > community run overlays)
>
> Who decides what goes away and what now? Which criteria is used here?

Duplicate packages (we don't need more than a few mp3 players),
unpopular packages with only a few users, unmaintained packages, and
broken packages. We would provide a set of packages for most things a
user would want to do and then sunrise/someone else provides ebuilds
for the rest. I was thinking something similar to what Ubuntu does,
they provide the basics to do most things and then they have universe
and multiverse repos for extra stuff.

> > - Formal approval process (or at least strict criteria) for adding
> > new packages
>
> Err what? So I, as a dev, that did quizzes, etc., cannot even anymore
> just add the package that has got my fancy atm, because there are some
> criteria to what is added and what not, and I have to go through a
> bureaucratic process just for that? Never!
> If for strict criteria you mean "there must be at least a dev or herd
> maintaining it", or such stuff, they already exist, they may just need
> some more enforcing... ;)

I believe that we have too many packages for us to maintain. We have
over 11,000 packages (over 24,000 ebuilds) and only about 175 active
developers. I don't think its maintainable and I don't think adding
more packages will make it any better.

> > - Make every dev a member of at least 1 arch team
>
> Which doesn't mean he will ever keyword stuff stable, other than his
> own, which he already can... Let's face it: most devs are mainly
> interested in their stuff, getting their stuff keyworded, and many
> wouldn't anyway have the time to efficiently work on an arch-team, as
> members of such I mean, not just as "I'm a member, so I keyword my
> stuff, that's it"... For that I agree with the current practice: if you
> want that, ask the arch-team first. ;)

Every developer should have access to at least 1 Gentoo system. They
should also be able to determine if something is stable or not. It
would cut down on the number of keyword/stable bugs if developers did
a lot of their own keywording.

> > - Double the number of developers with aggressive recruiting
>
> That's something that goes on since... forever! Gentoo's continuously
> recruiting new people, more aggressive recruiting has already been
> proposed many times, but it was always agreed to try to maintain a
> relatively high standard of new recruits, and if you want quality,
> finding loads of people who "just happen" to have the time and
> dedication to become a Gentoo dev isn't that easy.

Even when someone is found it is hard for them to find mentors. We
need to improve this. I had found someone who wanted to join the sound
team and I was unable to locate a mentor for him (I wasn't a dev for 6
months then, so I couldn't do it myself). I e-mailed sound@g.o and
only one person offered. The person who offered fell through because
he didn't have enough free time.

> > - No competing projects
>
> Kills innovation... Who comes first has total monopoly of that branch of
> things basically... I'd never agree to something like this, personally.

What happened to working together? Should we work together instead of
competing against each other?

> > - Drop all arches and Gentoo/Alt projects except Linux on amd64,
> > ppc32/64, sparc, and x86
>
> Uhhh is this real? How would this help at all?

We've got tons of keywording/stable bugs. There aren't enough
developers to do all the proper testing on all of the architectures
supported by Gentoo. Many of the arches are dead or soon to be dead
(m68k, alpha, mips, etc).

> > - Reduce the number of projects by eliminating the dead, weak,
> > understaffed, and unnecessary projects
>
> Again, who's the judge of that? If there is a project with at least one
> person active, it means for him it's not unnecessary...  What means weak
> project? What's unnecessary? Sure, kill the dead ones with no activity
> and no active members, that's easy and I agree with that, but the other,
> little ones, who's the one to say "you're understaffed and useless, go
> die!"? :S

We come up with a list of potential cuts and then the council decides
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