Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Michael Orlitzky <mjo@g.o>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] The end of "Herds"
Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 00:42:58
Message-Id: 54597281.40305@gentoo.org
In Reply to: [gentoo-user] The end of "Herds" by James
1 On 11/04/2014 03:13 PM, James wrote:
2 > Hello,
3 >
4 >
5 > If you follog gentoo-dev you can see Rich's summary
6 > interpretation (which I do agree with) posted at the
7 > bottom of this thread.
8 >
9 >
10 > Recently I was asked to help clean up some of the Java
11 > bugs.
12 >
13 > ...
14 > So I proposed, to one of the Java Herd members we blast out
15 > a few emails notifying everyone that if folks did not
16 > "reaffrim" these (very old) java bugs, they would be mass-closed.
17 > If you look at those (old bugs) most would agree with my
18 > assessment. However, I listed a few as blatant examples
19 > that needed to be closed. It seems there is no "closer" for
20 > java bugs. Nobody around with the authority (will?) to close
21 > any old Java bugs. The herd is descimated, on furlog or just
22 > burnt out and non-responsive. So all of my work and
23 > effort was for nothing.
24
25 This is exactly the problem we're trying to solve (and I'm sorry to hear
26 it, many of us have been in a similar position).
27
28 Herds as a group of developers have always been very poorly-defined. As
29 I've heard it repeated, originally packages were supposed to belong to
30 herds, and developers were supposed to belong to projects. But herds
31 almost always had an associated email address, so people who cared about
32 groups of packages would add themselves to the herd to get on the email
33 alias. But projects were there all along, too, and we wound up with a
34 bunch of people in herds who were never going to fix bugs and some
35 smaller number of people in projects (who might fix bugs) that weren't
36 in the herds. It was all very confusing, so the council is voting to
37 replace them with something that makes sense.
38
39 Basically we want to fix the situation we have right now where it's
40 impossible to tell who is actually working on Java packages. Once herds
41 are replaced, you should be able to get an accurate reading out of
42 metadata.xml and/or the wiki page. (And I'm sure anyone actually working
43 on Java would appreciate your help.)
44
45 For you personally, I would try to find one or two people on the Java
46 project (actually working on Java right now) and explain to them that
47 you'd like to help close old bugs. Then you can CC or reassign the Java
48 bugs to those people. When bug mail gets sent to a herd or project, it's
49 too easy to say "screw it, someone else will deal with it." Bugs
50 addressed to me personally get attention much sooner, even if only for
51 psychological reasons. So reassigning those to a single person might
52 prompt action sooner than you'd get otherwise.

Replies

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[gentoo-user] Re: The end of James <wireless@×××××××××××.com>