Re: [gentoo-science] website python error

[Marcus D. Hanwell]

On Saturday 16 September 2006 09:51, Andrey G. Grozin wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Sep 2006, Marcus D. Hanwell wrote:
> > On Friday 15 September 2006 08:50, Andrey G. Grozin wrote:
> > > On Thu, 14 Sep 2006, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> > > > Pretty sure they're not interested in linking to external overlays.
> > > > If you want a link, and to save some time on maintenance and future
> > > > breakage, it might be easier to just migrate to their hosting.
> > >
> > > I think this is an excellent idea. First-class inofficial overlays live
> > > at overlays.gentoo.org; we want the same status, we don't want to be
> > > second- (or third-) class.
> >
> > I think this statement is incorrect about first or second class overlays.
> > According to their own FAQs that is not the case. My own personal belief
> > says it certainly is not that case. To make a more reasoned case you have
> > to ask what the actual benefits of a move might be, i.e. bigger admin
> > team, more widely used/tested, shiny gentoo.org domain ending...
> >
> > But like I said in my last response if the overall opinion is to move I
> > will make the subversion repo backup available for migration of the
> > overlay. I set it up as a service for the Gentoo scientific community
> > before any of this was available as we were sick of waiting for it to
> > appear... Now it has may be the overlay would be better there. I am not
> > sure - I doubt it would hurt though...
>
> Suppose I am a Gentoo user, and I want to try some new package (or a
> bleeding-edge version) which is not in the main tree. I search the Gentoo
> website for links to some experimental overlays (something like rpmforge
> and freshrpms in the RedHat world). And aha! I find overlays.gentoo.org
> (and nothing else). If the package I want is in one of the overlays there,
> I am happy. If not, I am stuck.
>
> In other words, overlays.gentoo.org lives on the Gentoo continent;
> gentooscience.org is an island in the middle of nowhere.

May be that is where our opinions of what the overlay is for are very 
different. I never set the overlay up with general users in mind, and that 
wasn't what we discussed when we were thinking about why we needed an 
overlay.

In my opinion the overlay is there for interested users wishing to take a 
bigger role in development, using experimental ebuilds and helping to improve 
them until they are ready to go into the tree. As such I was never interested 
in trying to get the attention of some user searching for a particular ebuild. 
All ebuilds which are suitable should be moved into the main tree 
anyway and so the user will find it there...

I never tried to keep the overlay secret, but why should users have to 
set up a myriad of overlays if they just want to run a system? May be you 
would be better off becoming a developer and adding stuff to the tree? If we 
follow a trend of keeping more and more stuff in various overlays then Gentoo 
just becomes more of a pain to run IMHO.

I am hoping to get more proactive in moving suitable ebuilds from the overlay 
to the main tree in the near future. I will also be encouraging other devs to 
do the same if they are not already. So the overlay will get smaller as stuff 
is moved. Hopefully some of our active herd testers will go on to become 
developers and maintain some of this stuff themselves too.

May be the aims of the overlay should be more clearly defined through debate 
and documented on the overlay site. I am away for the week starting in about 
one hour anyway... I will catch up on discussions when I get back. It would 
be good to hear what more people think about this subject - may be I am on my 
own with my opinions?