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On 04/05/2010 03:48 AM, Ciaran McCreesh wrote: |
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> On Mon, 05 Apr 2010 03:33:52 +0200 |
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> Tobias Heinlein<keytoaster@g.o> wrote: |
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>> 3) Questions that aren't that important at all and would just be "nice |
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>> to know". |
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>> [snip] |
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>> Examples for these: |
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>> |
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>> 5. What is wrong with using $(somecommand) or `somecommand` or $ARCH |
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>> inside SRC_URI, DEPEND, etc? |
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>> [Devmanual, Caching] |
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> |
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> How the heck is this not important? Anyone who doesn't immediately know |
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> the answer to this has absolutely no business touching any ebuild that |
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> might end up being given to someone else. |
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> |
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My concern with these kinds of questions is that there really isn't any |
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page where we have key gotchas consolidated like "don't execute external |
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programs in global scope." Sure, it is in the devmanual, and if you |
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read the whole thing then maybe you might remember that one bit in |
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particular. |
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I agree that somebody who doesn't know this particular fact shouldn't be |
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committing ebuilds. My concern is that we don't really have any way to |
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make people aware of that particular fact. |
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Honestly, I think it would be just as effective to simply write up a |
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single webpage with thou shalt not's, and not make people go hunting all |
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over the place to figure out the whys. By all means have a link on each |
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thou shalt not to the reason. |
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There are lots of people who would be perfectly capable of doing many |
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developer activities who might not come in knowing about the metadata |
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cache. They don't need to know the nuts and bolts of how it works, just |
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what they need to do to avoid problems with it. |
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In any case, giving hints as to the location of the answer in this kind |
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of a question seems fine to me. The important thing is that the |
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candidate dev learn about the potential problem - not that they figure |
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it out 100% on their own. Still, the socratic method is a good approach |
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to teaching, so I'm not opposed to the Q&A format of the quiz in |
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general. We just need to let candidates know that we're there to help |
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them succeed and the quiz is a tool - the goal isn't to eliminate any |
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potential contributor who doesn't come to the table knowing as much |
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about Gentoo as any seasoned dev. |
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|
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Rich |
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