[gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-commits] gentoo-x86 commit in virtual/ffmpeg: ffmpeg-9.ebuild ChangeLog ffmpeg-0.10.2-r1.ebuild

[Duncan]

Diego Elio Pettenò posted on Fri, 18 Jan 2013 02:04:50 +0100 as excerpted:

> On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 1:32 AM, Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@×××.net> wrote:
>> To be clear I'm not in a position to offer, and I definitely respect
>> and value your volunteer work, but suppose someone /was/ sufficiently
>> interested in something like ffmpeg to be willing to pay for a
>> tinderbox run on it.  What sort of "pay for" are we talking?
>
> It's tricky to quantify honestly. [I] can give you an idea of what's
> involved, so that it gives an idea of why I tend to be touchy when
> people complain about the way I report bugs, or the choices of packages
> I make. For those who follow my blog, part of this has been covered
> already, so sorry if it feels like a re-heated soup.

Thanks.  Yes, part of it's rehash (I do follow the blog), but IMO there's 
quite some value in getting the information out there.  It can't hurt 
having a bit of background for the bug reports, and with any luck, it'll 
be interesting enough and make the concept real enough to get others 
considering running their own tinderboxes.

> Now with a bit of luck, the amount of logs to sift through for an
> ffmpeg-targeted tinderbox would be much less than those generated by
> tbamd64 (which uses glibc-2.17 and gcc-4.7), so let's say we end up with
> a total of 10/12 hr of work all in all? I wouldn't go as far as ask for
> my going hourly rate, but especially for ffmpeg, it would come for
> something a bit higher than a dinner at the next conference — more like
> the travel expenses (given a conference such as FOSDEM, not SCALE, to
> give an idea).

So several days of machine time, and /very/ conservatively, at least a 
work day of your time, more likely 1.5-2 workdays, maybe half a week.

Yeah, that's rather more than a dinner with beverage of choice... 
especially for something you'd rather not be working on anyway.

At least readers can have some ballpark idea of what's involved now, both 
from you personally, and what the cost of a sponsored run might look like.

> And before anybody tries to misrepresent what I wrote — I don't intend
> to charge anybody for my usual tinderbox runs; they run and they'll keep
> running for as long as I have time to dedicate to them.

Thanks for the answer.  With any luck, someone out there will find the 
information useful and you'll get a contact or two offering to sponsor a 
run, now that there's a bit more information out there, more publicly 
available.  A few more tinderbox runs and the resulting fixes certainly 
won't hurt gentoo's health, either, so everyone benefits. =:^)

One more question.  I've read about various tinderbox runs, and now we 
know they take several days of machine time plus say 1-2 (surely more for 
the really involved stuff, glibc and gcc touch about everything...) days 
of your time.

Are you queued up with tinderbox runs, or is there room for more demand?  
If someone like Shuttleworth came along and offered to sponsor you to 
work on gentoo and tinderboxes full time, how far up could it scale 
before it required more people, and would there be ever more tinderbox 
possibilities or would the law of diminishing returns kick in?  Would you 
consider that or find it too boring or depressing to do full time?

Reworded, how well does it scale, and how close are you/we to a knee, 
beyond that of your limited volunteer time, at least?

FWIW, my own ~amd64/~x86 deployments are REMARKABLY smoother now than in 
the past, and I know a lot of it is due to your tinderbox runs on new gcc/
glibc, for instance, as well as your work and that of others on
--as-needed and similar.  (The work of Zac and others on portage, smarter 
config-protect, etc, has helped dramatically lower my "maintenance time 
cost" as well, and there have been many other gentoo improvements over 
the years, with EAPI-5 now one of the latest. Newbie gentooers these days 
haven't a clue, no idea what it's like compiling "a mile in the snow, 
uphill both ways...!" =:^)

So I know I've directly benefited from your tinderbox runs and other 
projects you've done, and I really do appreciate it, especially as I know 
much of it is volunteer, tho some is work related but benefits gentoo as 
well.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman