Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Becoming a Gentoo developer?

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 7:30 PM, Kent Fredric <kentfredric@×××××.com> wrote:
>
> The best argument I have for why the quizzes being what they are is they
> require you to engage with gentoo staff in order to get them answered, and
> thus ensure you know how to ask questions.
>

That, and that you're able to interact with other developers, and know
WHEN to ask questions.

I'll take somebody who knows they can't write an ebuild and thus
doesn't commit anything without getting it reviewed over somebody who
think's they're God's gift to Gentoo and runs scripts that tweak half
the tree without so much as a whisper on -dev in advance.  The quizzes
really are just a basic competency test combined with an interviewing
tool.  The recruiters need to assess responsibility/maturity,
communication skills, and understanding of the fundamentals.  Anybody
can read the devmanual to brush up on some detail they forget.  What
we really need is somebody who realizes that they SHOULD read the
devmanual.

I'm not dismissing technical competence, especially the fundamentals.
It just isn't the area that tends to actually get us in trouble.

And if we did go with a more review-oriented workflow, it would
actually increase the importance of the soft skills.  A reviewer isn't
just ensuring that libfoo builds - they're also coordinating with all
the reverse dependency maintainers to ensure that they don't just
break without warning.

Look at it another way.  I and just about everybody else with an @g.o
address on this list basically has root access to every Gentoo box you
use (unless you have your own rigorous QA process).  You're putting a
lot of trust in us.  We owe it to you to ensure that somebody who is
going to get upset and stick something nasty in an ebuild because
they're having a bad day doesn't have commit rights.

There are plenty of flame wars on the lists, and many differences of
opinion.  However, when it comes to the repository we really don't
have much tolerance for messing around.  Things like revert wars or
reverts of QA commits need to be treated very seriously.

So, that is part of why we have mentors/recruiters/interviews/etc.
We'd like to get to know you.

-- 
Rich