[gentoo-project] Re: Plan, then communicate

[John Lawles]

Alec,

     I love Gentoo and I am very grateful for all the very
impressive that Gentoo developers have done.  As a mere end-user, I
make no claim to have expertise or answers, only questions that
other end-users likely have.

     As background, Gentoo users, like me, are happy spending a lot
of time configuring/upgrading if the end-result is a system
configured exactly as we want it.  Thus, for example, unlike users
of other distributions, we are happy configuring/compiling our own
kernels.

     The central issue that Gentoo end-users have, as I gather it,
is that running Gentoo takes a lot of time that does not seem to
fall into the above category.  For instance, every portage tree
seems to have various issues like blockers and faulty or circular
dependencies.  The work-arounds get hashed out over time in the
forums.  It is productive for the first, say, ten people to find
the problem and test a work-around.  It is a waste to have a
hundred or a thousand people repeat that process starting from
scratch.

     A possible solution is Daniel Robbins' proposal to have
separate "developer-facing" and "user-facing" portage trees.
Developers working on the developer-facing side would be freed to
experiment, hopefully improving their productivity.  Only the
tested and successful ideas would be ported to the user-facing
tree, improving end-user satisfaction.

     Is that a good idea?  Do developers here have still better
ideas?  I don't know but Daniel has (a) recognized a key problem as
users see it, (b) proposed a solution, and (c) communicated a plan
to users.  That, rightly or wrongly, gives end-users confidence in
him.

Regards,

John

P.S. I love Gentoo and I am very grateful for all the very
impressive that Gentoo developers have done.
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