Re: [gentoo-dev] CVS and non-devs (again!)

[Jon Portnoy]

On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 02:21:52PM +0100, Jan Schubert wrote:
> Jon Portnoy wrote:
>
> >And millions of bug reports from users who don't realize they shouldn't
> >report bugs to us on unofficial, unsupported ebuilds, plus users who
> >don't realize Gentoo isn't responsible for any breakage, viruses, or
> >whatever else propogated by an unofficial tree.
> >
> >
> Jon, what John meant is maybe something like to just allow "qualified"
> non devs to support work in the unofficial tree.  I'm quite sure that
> these non devs feel very responsible for their work. There might be some
> BugReports in the beginning, but they will be handled by the responsible
> non dev. Maybe some of these non devs will become a dev in the future or
> where asked to become a dev in the past but just don't have the time for
> such a responsible job (personally this is half of the true for me - the
> other half is that i'm feeling that i'm still in the progress of learning).

If they're not part of the Gentoo organization, there is no 
accountability and Gentoo is left holding the bag if someone commits 
something that breaks a bunch of people's systems. No, that's not how 
things should be, but that's the way things are. As it is we get bug 
reports, especially on GNOME stuff, from people using breakmygentoo 
ebuilds despite the fact that BMG tells people in about six billion 
places not to report bugs to Gentoo.

>
> On the other side i believe, that users accessing this unofficial tree
> know what they are doing, so it should'nt reflect the official devs that
> much. In my understanding this "feature" is requested by people which
> are not that happy with the current situation (some of them are these
> non devs we talking about). All of them are aware of the consequences.
> This tree would be completely out of scope for "normal" users (they most
> likely never get in touch with this unofficial tree).

See above. People using BMG ebuilds "know what they're doing" and still 
somehow think bugs should go to Gentoo.

Picking specific people with a history of contributions to commit to 
this secondary tree would be silly -- why would that fix anything, if 
the current problem is that people feel like they're doing a lot of good 
work and not getting picked up as official developers with commit 
access? Wouldn't it be the same issue?

Be realistic. New users are desperate to be "bleeding edge" far moreso 
than experienced users and are also more likely to badmouth Gentoo 
because of borkage in this secondary tree and report invalid bugs to us, 
increasing the workload of bug-wranglers and anyone bugs get mistakenly 
assigned to. It would, frankly, lower the overall quality of the 
distribution. Bad ebuilds, same programs mistakenly committed under a 
different name (or in the wrong category), etc.

Could committers be given elevated bugzilla privs to handle their own 
bugs? Yes. Do I want bug-wranglers wasting their time on handling tons 
of bugs on the many low quality ebuilds that would inevitably result? 
No.

And I'm not saying that every ebuild produced by users is 
low-quality, but look through a bunch of new ebuilds from various 
submitters on bugzilla sometime and you'll find an incredible number of 
incomplete or incorrect ebuilds.

Of course, anyone and their mother can run their own CVS server. But 
there's no way I would want something like this hosted on Gentoo 
infrastructure or with Gentoo's name on it.

>
> Maybe all these mails are just a request for an "official" unofficial
> tree!? The problem of lots of unsubmitted ebuilds in bugzilla has to be
> adressed somehow. You should use the motiviatian and the added value
> which these non devs would like to bring in. Don't offend them!

I'm sorry if refusing to pander to every request is offensive. If people 
can't take rejection from time to time, I don't want them working for 
Gentoo either.

Nearly every submitted ebuild is for a fairly small application used by 
a fairly small number of people. I don't think putting every single 
piece of software ever created in the tree is an urgent issue. QA and 
accountability are far more pressing.

-- 
Jon Portnoy
avenj/irc.freenode.net

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