Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Nirbheek Chauhan <nirbheek@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] [bugzilla-daemon@gentoo.org: [Bug 322157] [mail-filter/procmail] new ebuild + autocreate maildirs]
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2010 10:28:30
Message-Id: AANLkTil_ID1uxWW6n9qixO9R61TLijfs0Oi_buNNLJN-@mail.gmail.com
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-dev] [bugzilla-daemon@gentoo.org: [Bug 322157] [mail-filter/procmail] new ebuild + autocreate maildirs] by Enrico Weigelt
1 On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 3:23 PM, Enrico Weigelt <weigelt@×××××.de> wrote:
2 > * Nirbheek Chauhan <nirbheek@g.o> schrieb:
3 >> I don't see how these various distros can be made to agree with
4 >> each other and I certainly can't see them using a common tarball
5 >> source.
6 >
7 > Thats not even necessary. They just should use the infrastructure,
8 > as described in my paper. So everyone can easily set up automatic
9 > notifications, cherry-pick, etc, etc.
10 >
11
12 Why should we? I am *yet* to see a single reason for us to change how
13 we work other than "please use this since I've been putting a lot of
14 effort into it".
15
16 >> On a technical level, it's got serious security, trust, and
17 >> redundancy problems.
18 >
19 > Git makes that very easy ;-p
20 >
21
22 No, it does not. The security problems come because you are the single
23 point of failure. The trust problems come because we have no reason to
24 trust you. The redundancy problems come because if your hosting goes
25 down or you lose interest, we're left high and dry. Git has nothing to
26 do with any of this.
27
28 >> It is extremely important that distros collaborate in some form
29 >> when it comes to patches that *can* be shared,
30 >
31 > If we're doing a good job (my generic fixes instead of distro-
32 > specfic dirty hacks) about 99% can be shared ;-p
33 >
34
35 I'd advise you to take a look at the sort of patching Ubuntu/Debian
36 does, and then revisit that figure. You'll find it more along the
37 lines of 30%.
38
39
40 >> A practical solution to the problem of patch sharing is to
41 >> have a website with a search interface for upstream source
42 >> tarballs, which can display all the patches that various
43 >> distros apply, as well as a download link for the patchsets
44 >> (hotlinked to the distro files where possible).
45 >
46 > Too complicated, and actually would not help me a single bit.
47
48 Help *you*? I thought this was about helping the distros. If your
49 proposal is not about making our work easier, please don't waste our
50 time.
51
52 >> Distro packagers are much more comfortable with downloading
53 >> patchsets from a foreign source than complete tarballs.
54 >
55 > man git-format-patch ;-p
56 >
57
58 So why don't you submit that to bugzilla?
59
60 >> I know you have spent a lot of time on this already, but please
61 >> understand it from where we stand. We're short on manpower, and
62 >> there's no real benefits of shifting our tarball source; OTOH there
63 >> are major disadvantages too unless we pitch in with manpower
64 >> ourselves. And honestly speaking, that manpower is better spent making
65 >> stuff work locally.
66 >
67 > Well, Gentoo is short of manpower ? hmm, perhaps some should think
68 > about why so many folks are resigning and so few fresh coming in
69 > (at least according to this lists traffic) ;-O
70 >
71
72 I'm beginning to think that you're not taking my honest advice very seriously.
73
74 >> Please consider the "patch-website" idea above. We definitely need
75 >> someone to code it up, gather the source-package to distro patches
76 >> mappings, and advertise it.
77 >
78 > Actually, I once had somehing in that area, called "comprehensive
79 > source database", but unfurtinately it got lost in an disk array
80 > crash a few years ago, and I didnt find the time to rewrite it yet.
81 >
82 > Meanwhile I dont need it anymore, since I gave up maintaining
83 > plaintext patches in favour of git. And that makes my daily works
84 > _much_ easier.
85 >
86
87 You don't need to maintain **anything** manually if you code the
88 website properly. That's the whole point. You get major benefits with
89 minimal long-term work which can be done by a single person in their
90 free time.
91
92 This job is easily automated to simply aggregate links to patches
93 which all the distros manually publish themselves. For Gentoo, it's
94 the ebuilds; for Debian/Ubuntu, they actually publish the diffs[1];
95 Fedora keeps its patches in a common CVS repo[2], etc etc. Once the
96 website is up and running, maintenance is minimal, and can be done by
97 a single person looking at it in their free time.
98
99 1. See packages.(debian|ubuntu).(org|com)
100 2. cvs.fedoraproject.org/viewvc/
101
102 --
103 ~Nirbheek Chauhan
104
105 Gentoo GNOME+Mozilla Team

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