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

[John Nilsson]

I must confess my original motivation for this idea. The feature I want
is to get ebuild for epia patched packages (xfree, kernel, mythtv and
friends) as easy as emerge -u world (mabey even in the same command).
Second, puting these ebuild in a semi official tree would expose them to
more people, thus hopefully more devs(not gentoo-devs) and testers.

Higher quality unofficial ebuild in a way...

I do belive that the issue tracking system is flawed if these kind of
bug-reports is a problem though...
If all bugs was attached to a specific ebuild, this wouldn't be problem
would it?

-John


On Thu, 2004-01-22 at 17:43, Jon Portnoy wrote:
> 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.