Gentoo Archives: gentoo-project

From: Lucas Nussbaum <lucas@××××××××××××××.net>
To: gentoo-project@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-project] Some questions about Gentoo
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 06:36:00
Message-Id: 20070921051204.GA32503@xanadu.blop.info
1 Hi,
2
3 I'm involved both in Debian and Ubuntu development, and I'm often
4 frustrated by how little I know about the other distributions. After
5 discussing this in a blog post[1], I got the impression that I wasn't
6 alone in that case.
7
8 So I decided to do something about that, and to go ask the other
9 distributions' developers a few questions. If this works well (answers and
10 interest from other distros), I might do that again, or turn this into
11 something more formal (for example, a mailing list and/or a wiki would
12 seem well suited for that).
13
14 I started by contacting openSUSE and Fedora developers developers, and got
15 very interesting answers. I'll publish the answers on my blog[2], and, if
16 this proves to raise interest, move them to a wiki.
17
18 [1] http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=250
19 [2] http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/
20
21 Here is a first set of questions. In your answers, please avoid codenames
22 (act as if the reader didn't know anything about your distribution).
23 Please try to write your answer as a short paragraph, answering all the
24 sub-questions from the questions at once.
25
26 Q1. Packages
27 How many "pieces of software" do you have in your distribution? Do you
28 distinguish between "source packages" and "binary packages"? (if yes,
29 give numbers for both). Are there subdivisions in the set of packages (by
30 kind of support, by "freeness")? Are all packages supported the same way,
31 or are there different levels of support? (If different levels, how many
32 packages are supported with each level?) Are some packages imported from
33 another distribution, or are most of your packages done from scratch by
34 your developers ?
35
36 Q2. Your developers
37 What's a "developer" in your distribution? How many developers do you
38 have? How many of these developers were active in 2007? Does a company
39 (which one?) employ a large number of developers? Do you have different
40 "classes" of developers, or does everybody have the same access right to
41 all your packages? How do you integrate new developers? How do you
42 handle contributors who don't have access rights to the archive? (is
43 there some kind of mentoring/sponsoring system?)
44
45 Q3. Developers and packages ownership
46 What's the relationship between developers and packages? Does each
47 package have an assigned developer, or can everybody modify all packages
48 without stepping on anyone's toes? Are packages mostly maintained by
49 teams, or by developers working alone?
50
51 Other questions:
52 - Did I send that mail to the right mailing list?
53 - Which question should I have asked? What should I ask next?
54 - Do you think that this initiative is interesting?
55 - Do you think that this should move to a seperate mailing list? Would
56 you participate in such a mailing list?
57 - Can you suggest a project that could host such a mailing list without
58 annoying anyone? :)
59 - Any other suggestions?
60
61 Thank you for reading me so far -- and for answering my questions if you
62 did. ;) If you want me to ping you when I'll publish the answers, just
63 drop me a mail.
64 --
65 | Lucas Nussbaum
66 | lucas@××××××××××××××.net http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ |
67 | jabber: lucas@××××××××.fr GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F |
68 --
69 gentoo-project@g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
[gentoo-project] Re: Some questions about Gentoo Christian Faulhammer <opfer@g.o>