Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2013-09-10

[Jack Morgan]

On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 12:15:14PM +0100, Markos Chandras wrote:
> On 27 August 2013 10:54, Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o> wrote:
> > In two weeks from now, the council will meet again. This is the time
> > to raise and prepare items that the council should put on the agenda
> > to discuss or vote on.
> >
> > Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
> > repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
> > suggested one (since the last meeting).
> >
> > The agenda for the next meeting will be sent out on Tuesday 2013-09-03.
> >
> > Please respond to the gentoo-project list, if possible.
> >
> > Ulrich
>
> Hi,
>
> I'd like to ask the council to vote on the following topics regarding the
> 'minor arches' based on the feedback I received on the respective
> thread in the gentoo-dev mailing list
>
> http://marc.info/?l=gentoo-dev&m=137708312817671&w=1
>
> Drop the following arches to ~arch
>
> - s390
> - sh
> - ia64
> - alpha
> - m68k
> - sparc
> -(maybe ppc and ppc64?)

I work on ia64, sparc, ppc and ppc64. I'm completely against this
proposal in its current form.  


> The feedback on the original question was mostly positive.
> Most people agree that the long stabilization queues for these
> architectures create problems for maintainers wishing to drop old versions.

Only a hand full of people responded to the email thread (possitively or
negatively) so I don't think that your statement above is correct about
"most people agree" since we have somewhere over a hundred developers?

Please provide data to support your claim here about "problems for
maintainers". I've not seen this. What I have seen is someone posting,
"hey we need more people to help out with ppc" and several people
helped out. In addition, we have ARCH specific hardware[1] that any
developer can gain access to to do ARCH testing. I beleive this is what
ago does. 

As I mentioned in the -dev ML, I don't think this is the right approach
to your concern. There should be a clear definition of what is  expected
from an arch that is offically supported by Gentoo Linux. By offically
supportd I mean ARCH/stable keyworded. If an arch fails to meet those
requirements, then "demote" it to ~arch only status. This should be a
GLEP. Otherwise, you are asking others to base their decision on someones
perception. 

> The council should also take into consideration that the stabilization process
> for these arches is mostly a one-man job (Agostino).

This is not true. Ago does do a majority share true but he is not the only
one. I do like how he does arch testing. I think we should strive to
replicate his process thus removing this concern. 

> However, some people raised the point that we should provide stable stages
> for these architectures and drop everything else to ~arch.

What for? So we can give the false precetion that Gentoo Linux supports
a specific ARCH?

> So if the Council votes 'NO' to the original question, vote on whether
> only @system should be stable for these architectures.
>
> The Council should also provide a list of the arches that wishes to
> "mark" as ~arch (even if they only do stable @system)
> so maintainers are aware of the situation
 
This is a confusing. What is the real problem you are trying to solve
here? Stable @system but not having to worry about keywording anything
else.. like a desktop (gnome, KDE)?


If keywording an ARCH is a real concern, then Gentoo Linux should have
a long hard look as what it wants to support as a developer community. I
want to challange the council to take this as an opportunity to define
this. If developer resources are limited, then Gentoo Linux can't
support everything it has in the portage tree.

 
[1] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/infrastructure/dev-machines.xml

-- 
Jack Morgan
Pub 4096R/761D8E0A 2010-09-13 Jack Morgan <jmorgan@g.o>>
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