Re: [gentoo-dev] The request to abolish games team policy

[James Potts]

On Mon, Jul 7, 2014 at 4:45 PM, Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o> wrote:
> Dear Community,
>
> First of all, please do not take this personally. I don't want to
> attack any member of the games team or the team in general. I respect
> their experience and long-term contribution to Gentoo. However,
> I strongly disagree with the policy games team has established and I
> believe that their actions do not serve the best interest of Gentoo.
>
> I am therefore going to propose this request to the next Council. Since
> this will likely require a fair amount of prior discussion, I would
> like to start it already, hopefully reaching at least some point before
> the appropriate Council meeting.
>
>
> I would like to ask the Council to abolish the following policies that
> have been established by the games team:
>
> 1. that the games team has authority over the actual maintainers
> on every game ebuild,
>
> 2. that every ebuild has to inherit games.eclass as the last eclass
> inherited [1], even if it actually increases the ebuild size rather
> than helping,
>
> 3. that games must adhere to games team-specific install locations
> and ownership rules, shortly listed in [2].
>
> More specifically, I would like the games to be 'freed' from the games
> team monopoly and treated like every other package. More specifically,
> I believe that:
>
> i. games should be maintained by their respective maintainers,
> and games team (if any) should help rather than overriding their
> decisions,
>
> ii. that the games.eclass should be deprecated and likely disabled
> in the next EAPI since wrapping phases and helper functions makes it
> close to base.eclass in design,
>
> iii. that the games group along with the game-specific install tree
> should be deprecated and phased out. Games should be installed alike
> any other applications.
>
>
> I feel like the games team is more focused on keeping the 'status
> quo' than working on improving the experience of Gentoo users.
> The problems with current game install design have been pointed out
> multiple times, and the suggestions were either ignored by the team or
> refused, sometimes with strong words. In fact, the team's own decisions
> are creating further issues that they afterwards need to work around.
>
> The most notable issues with the specific use of games group include:
>
> a. nethack security issue [3] that is purely Gentoo-specific, and is
> open with no action from games since 2006,
>
> b. multiple game ebuilds being unable to access files installed by
> other game ebuilds that are worked around with dangerous
> RESTRICT=userpriv [4,5,6].
>
> Moreover, the eclass is purely suited for autotools-based ebuilds.
> The policy enforced by the team makes it very hard to create proper
> ebuilds for other build systems, often requiring redeclaration of all
> phase functions (to restore the proper eclass) and heavy patching of
> install locations.
>
>
> The number of inconveniences, lack of replies (lack of time?) has
> resulted in multiple games being spread throughout various overlays.
> I think the gamerlay project [7] is most notable. Sadly, this results
> in even worse quality of games in Gentoo.
>
> I believe that the policy needs to change. While I respect the members
> of games team, I don't think they should be allowed to prevent other
> developers from committing game ebuilds, and I don't agree with keeping
> the 'status quo' of games.eclass for the sake of keeping it while
> the issues outweigh the benefit (it is actually negotiable whether
> there's any).
>
> I would like to ask the Community for their opinion on this issue.
> When the new Council term starts, I will add the issue to the agenda.
> Unless the games team decides to give up their policies and allow
> developers to work on cleaning up games before that.
>
>
> [1]:http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/games/games-ebuild-howto.xml#doc_chap3
> [2]:http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/games/games-ebuild-howto.xml#doc_chap4
> [3]:https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=125902
> [4]:https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=112898
> [5]:https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=419331
> [6]:https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=516576
> [7]:https://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/gamerlay.git;a=summary
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Michał Górny

Here's my non-developer point-of-view:

I agree with this - games are lagging way behind in gentoo compared to
other distributions, and this heavy-handed super-maintainership by the
games herd explains why.  If a person wants his game to be
co-maintained by the games herd, fine, they have to follow the rules
of the games herd, but being in the games herd should be an option,
not a requirement for a game to be in the tree.  Lets let the people
who want to maintain game ebuilds maintain them, governed by the same
rules as all other ebuilds, regardless of herd status.

I also agree that the games group needs to go, for the most part -
users shouldn't have to be in it to play games (they shouldn't be in
it at all, but that's a different story) - that's a dated policy that
likely comes from mainframe unix environments and really doesn't
belong on a modern linux desktop or server, so it just winds up
confusing and/or annoying people.

--James