Re: [gentoo-dev] Project Sunrise thread -- a try of clarification

[Markus Ullmann]

To clarify things a bit (hopefully):

1) security

This is not the main tree, just a normal overlay. Okay, some non-devs
contribute here but doesn't change the fact that it is just an overlay
as any other out there in the world. Well, it is a bit different. Here
are some devs keeping an eye on the evolution and can help people with
doing it right and thus get better contributions in the end.

2) responsibility

As already mentioned at 1), it is an overlay. The devs on sunrise do
keep an eye on it and all ebuilds do have to pass at least repoman and
some basic QA checks (currently done when porting them from bugs.g.o) so
that they don't do some rm -rf / thing. They should be improved by the
contributors then so that we have two things here: a) a contributor who
can contribute good-quality ebuils and b) a good ebuild to be picked up
by a dev and ported to the tree

3) replacement for bugs.g.o

This project isn't a try to replace the contributions to bugs. It should
just help to fetch and update things. We have help from bug-wranglers
here (well, at least from jakub) to keep the overlay in sync with it so
that one can say "Yeah, my-example/myapp r158 has this and this issue,
here is a fix for it" and then either the sunrise-devs or one of the
project-contributors commits it to the overlay.

4) workload on devs

Well I really have problems to see increased workload on devs here who
don't actively support the project. They can scour bugzie for
interesting ebuilds and instead of fetching files, renaming them, moving
them to a local overlay dir, just do a svn co
http://overlays.gentoo.org/svn/proj/sunrise/sys-auth/pam_skey/ (as an
example here) and you have all needed files already prepared to look at
them or to give them a try.

5) the tarball problem

On some bugs we also notice that people contribute tarballs instead of
ebuilds and the files as such.
Some apps need a change on a bunch of files with every version bump.
Take MailScanner as an example  (
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36060 ). Many devs cry out loud
when they come across a tarball on bugzie. It is not the best way of
contribution, I know that myself. But take it the otherway around.
Someone out there took time (on some apps it is really much time) and
provided an ebuild. Maybe he is new to it and doesn't know much about
bugzie (no usability talk required here, done every 3 months on bugzie
devel ml) then they post their hard work there. Then a dev comes along
and says "never ever do attach tarballs blah blubb", the contributor
feels scared as it was his first contribution and the dev was crying out
loud and would surely think twice if the work done is worth it.

6) problems on infra hardware

Well Lance arised that, so if infra has that big concerns about this
project (I personally see no hard reason for it, but let the infra guys
handle it how they want), then feel free to drop me a note and we host
it elsewhere. I really see a great chance for contributors here as they
can improve themselves here and if they contribute good quality, even
commit themselves and learn how to handle maintainership. You all know
we also have some people out there that would like to maintain just one
or two packages. Now we call it proxy maintainership but why not giving
them commit access to sunrise then? They can maintain it here without
the whole workload as dev, but maybe they get encouraged by doing so and
then become a dev later. Lots of options are possible here.

7) non maintainer-wanted things

Some ebuilds found their way into the overlay, we talked about that
internally and I'll remove them after this mail is sent out, so that we
stick to maintainer-wanted things here.

Greetz,
Jokey