Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Training points for users interested in helping out with ebuild development

[Patrick Lauer]

On Tuesday 12 May 2009 00:31:36 Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Mon, 11 May 2009 23:17:32 +0100
>
> George Prowse <george.prowse@×××××.com> wrote:
> > An equilibrium seems to have been reached which currently works.
>
> An equilibrium has been reached, agreed, but that it works is up for
> debate. There is a strong argument to be made that preserving the
> equilibrium will keep Gentoo the way it is now -- delivering at best the
> same user experience now that it was several years ago, in an
> increasingly difficult and more competitive environment.

At times I do wonder ... 

[long-winded rant following]

I've been using a few different distros over the last years. Mostly because 
people claimed that Gentoo is too hard (hey, it has a Big Friendly Manual and 
Ubuntu has a GUI installer! Ubuntu must be easier!) or didn't want to change 
their ways ("I've always used Debian Lenny. Why should I change now!")

What I realized after some time is that we're ahead of the curve. Baselayout 1 
is neat, but OpenRC is awesome. Machines rebooting in the time it takes some 
other init systems to not properly restart a service and such funny things. 
Service dependencies. A proper network config that doesn't make you bite the 
edge of the table in frustration.

Then there's package management. (Your favourite topic, I guess, because you 
want to keep complexifying it until one needs a PhD to write an ebuild [which, 
in a way, would be quite ironic])
Ever tried getting a newer version of PHP with _that_ feature enabled that the 
distro maintainer didn't like and thus disabled? Whee. Fun.
And on larger installations you usually need slightly customized packages, so 
these jokers build things from source. Manually. 
Makes it easy not to get updates too ...

Then you get the bonus features - you can have multiple versions of KDE 
installed at the same time. There's quite a lot of packages (some not that 
well maintained, but that's hard to avoid) and lots of unofficial and semi-
official overlays that have most things you need. 

So I'd say we're in a rather good position.

And now you say "delivering the same user experience" ... 
... ignoring the tons of new features and things that have happened. You're 
being dishonest again in an attempt to make us look like baboons. Two thirds 
of the new features grew on your compost heap (and half of these features we 
didn't even want, but after about three years of you pushing them at every 
opportunity people are getting so demotivated that they are willing to let you 
have one feature if you just STOP WHINING for more than 10 minutes)[GLEP55, 
for example - there's about 8 people that want it, but those keep bringing it 
up at EVERY opportunity. It's still a fundamentally stupid idea that doesn't 
solve any problems, and the claim that it might solve problems we have in the 
future is quite asinine because we can do the changes then, _if_ the 
theoretical problems actually become an issue, without messing up most 
everything now for some hypothetical gain that has not even conclusively shown 
...]

People have forked Gentoo with the goal of "making things better", and look 
where it leads them - most of them turn into a passive downstream of gentoo, 
absorbing bugfixes with a day to a month delay until bugfixes make it in. And 
those that don't stay passive slowly collapse until they are nothing more than 
a shiny webpage. 

People refuse to learn from that, but the "lessons" are quite obvious:

- We're not in a bad shape, dying or dead. We don't intend to. 

- Progress doesn't have to be disruptive features. Use-deps are a behind-the-
scenes improvement that few users hit directly, so most aren't even aware of 
the improvements happening

- More complex doesn't mean better.
"Perfection isn't when you cannot add more things but when there are none left 
to remove" or how that quote went. You know what I mean. Rewriting the init 
scripts in XML might be what some call progress (now you can verify 'em!), but 
it doesn't actually add any value and complexifies things in a bad way

- Repeating a lie can make it true, if you repeat it long enough. Worst case 
you just have to wait until everyone who disagrees dies of old age.

So anyways, just felt the need to rant a bit too. Can't let you keep a 
monopoly on that, eh?