Re: [gentoo-dev] Sunrise contemplations

[Jeroen Roovers]

On Tue, 1 Aug 2006 10:21:53 +0200
Tobias Klausmann <klausman@××××××××××××.de> wrote:

> Idea: should it be more obvious in emerge --info and ebuild
> failure that an overlay is involved? If it's obvious enough, I
> don't see a problem. Also, a command that lists all installed
> packages that come from an overlay might be useful (maybe even a
> sa part of --info).

emerge --info can easily be forged. I've seen people asking for help on
#gentoo do it a few too many times (some even refuse to provide it),
and have wasted precious minutes not just wondering what the error
messages meant, but also whether I could trust the user.

Having to do the latter of these could hardly be called "supportive" of
Gentoo's user base, yet every so often you have to investigate whether
a user has been absolutely truthful about his or her problem. Sometimes
users have built their entire system using -fomg-fastwoah only to see
the system collapse at the NNth package, sometimes they've copied some
ebuilds/eclasses from an overlay. Sometimes they don't even use Gentoo
but go for the massive numbers of users and guess that someone in
#gentoo ought to be able to help them with their home-built packages.

The only way to have people submit emerge --info properly and reliably
would be to set up an online ticketing system - something like this:


# emerge --submit-info

* sys-apps/portage generates emerge --info output and uploads it
relatively tamper-proof to tickets.g.o, and

* returns a ticket to the user, a unique number that he or she can
communicate to developers and active users through a URL like
http://tickets.g.o/#ticket-number.

* --submit-info includes information about the emerge commandline that
was run last and what category/package/version emerge was
building/installing at the time.


This not only makes it a lot easier to find the causes of any bugs or
other problems, which helps Gentoo get the user entry level down,
in chime with efforts like the Gentoo Linux Installer project, it
might also help ensure that bug reports will in all likelihood not have
been tampered with, since tampering with the info would require
tampering with sys-apps/portage.

Now, do I appear to sound mistrustful of Gentoo users? Perhaps. Perhaps,
this --submit-info stuff reminds you of Product Activation routines
used by closed source software vendors. Perhaps you think I am being
paranoid. Maybe you think that FOSS should be a free-for-all exchange
of meaningful information, which I would whole-heartedly agree with -
the information would be meaningless if could not trust it.

All I know is that too many bugs on bugs.g.o and too many questions on
#gentoo remain unsolved or unanswered because of a lack of reliable
information. --submit-info would not only help improve bug handling,
but would also give the Gentoo Project useful feedback about its users.
Developers could require such a ticket to resume or even to start
analysing a bug.

It's a far cry from what Gentoo originally was supposed to be, I admit.
I am not even going to argue that this ticket system is necessary or
should be adopted by all developers once it has been implemented - it is
a means to an end, or perhaps several ends, none of which are required
to further develop Gentoo.


Kind regards,
     JeR
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