Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: John Helmert III <ajak@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Disturbing state of arch testing in Gentoo
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2022 00:34:35
Message-Id: Y2mkFcRfFOZy0DER@gentoo.org
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-dev] Disturbing state of arch testing in Gentoo by Rich Freeman
1 On Mon, Nov 07, 2022 at 07:23:33PM -0500, Rich Freeman wrote:
2 > On Mon, Nov 7, 2022 at 6:16 PM Sam James <sam@g.o> wrote:
3 > >
4 > > > On 7 Nov 2022, at 06:07, Oskari Pirhonen <xxc3ncoredxx@×××××.com> wrote:
5 > > >
6 > > > On Sun, Nov 06, 2022 at 11:37:24 +0100, Piotr Karbowski wrote:
7 > > >> I would be in favour of stepping up the social contract and actually
8 > > >> prohibiting this kind of things, we had that before too, the nattka you
9 > > >> mgorny wrote is replacement for old bugzilla bot that was ...
10 > > >> closedsource and perished, though nattka now have way more features than
11 > > >> the old thing ever had.
12 > > >
13 > > > As a user, I think it would be really cool if there was a requirement
14 > > > that all infra and infra-adjacent stuff was free software.
15 > > >
16 > > > I feel like I've read that Debian already has something like this. While
17 > > > doing some quick searches I didn't find a full-on requirement, but all
18 > > > their infra bits I did find were powered by free software. The most
19 > > > relevant ones being buildd [1] and debci [2]. Additionally, the debci
20 > > > docs has inctructions on reproducing tests yourself [3] which is a nice
21 > > > extra IMO.
22 > >
23 > > Gentoo has https://www.gentoo.org/get-started/philosophy/social-contract.html.
24 >
25 > I feel like something like a dev-run tinderbox is a bit out of the
26 > scope of that.
27 >
28 > Suppose I file a bug against a package, pointing out some issue in it.
29 > How do you know I didn't use some proprietary static code analysis
30 > tool to discover that error? Does it even really matter? The bug
31 > speaks for itself. It is like worrying about whether somebody who
32 > filed a bug was running Windows or another proprietary OS or browser
33 > on their desktop.
34 >
35 > Well, a tinderbox is just an automated process for doing just that.
36 > We don't require any dev to use a proprietary tinderbox before
37 > committing. It is something that individual devs choose to use for
38 > themselves, automating the testing workflow and possibly the
39 > submission of bugs.
40 >
41 > I think the key is something that was brought up earlier in the
42 > thread: is this causing problems? If somebody is running some tool
43 > against the repository and automatically filing bugs, and those bugs
44 > are not useful/actionable and waste the time of volunteers, then that
45 > is a problem. Proprietary tools do contribute to this since they can
46 > generate results that are harder to reproduce, but if they are clear
47 > and accurate and actionable it could still be a net-positive.
48
49 In some cases, yes, this is exactly the problem. This was one of the
50 bugs reported in the now-deleted issue tracking repository on Github.
51
52 > Of course if somebody wants to contribute to 100% FOSS tinderbox
53 > efforts that would be even better. Perhaps if our 100% FOSS tinderbox
54 > efforts addressed our needs very well, then nobody would want to
55 > bother with the proprietary reports, or generating them. IMO it would
56 > be better to create the FOSS solution before abandoning the
57 > proprietary one. Doing otherwise is basically burning bridges - it
58 > can be motivating in a sense but not really ideal. I'd love to have a
59 > 100% FOSS solution around all of this, but I appreciate what has been
60 > created and can hardly criticize volunteers for failing to make it
61 > happen, especially since I haven't contributed to that myself.
62 >
63 > --
64 > Rich
65 >

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Disturbing state of arch testing in Gentoo Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o>