Re: [gentoo-user] Re: status of dev-java/icedtea

[Andrew Savchenko]

On Sat, 2 Jul 2016 14:00:29 -0400 Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 2, 2016 at 1:34 PM, James <wireless@×××××××××××.com> wrote:
> >
> > No wonder the gentoo dev graveyard is so much bigger than those who are
> > still active....
>
> You're probably conflating effect with cause.  It isn't like the
> treecleaners arose and drove off all the devs.  (How could they?
> There are only a few of them, and Gentoo policy does operate by
> majority rules.)

I agree with James, the tree cleaners are on the verge of abusing
their power as well as the security team in PMASK-related issues.

A lot of packages are being removed just because upstream is AWOL
and package has no maintainer[1]. If package is not
seriously broken, there are _no valid reasons_ to remove it. If
homepage is not availed or was not updated for a few years, but
package still works fine, it should not be removed. "Packages are
still sitting in ~arch" is even less grounded reason: some people
do not use arch at all (including myself).

Of course such packages have higher probability of being broken in
the future, but as long as they work, they must remain in the tree.

Same applies for security team, some packages are being masked for
removal due to either minor security issues[2] or issues affecting
very limited number of application use cases[3].

I understand that people are probably irritated like "we don't want
more of this crap in the tree", but they may do more harm than good
with such approach.

> It is more like Gentoo's popularity has waned somewhat and we don't
> have as many devs as we used to

Cant agree with this: we have approximately the same number of devs
for several last years (actually it is increasing a bit from ~230
to ~240 with VCS write access) and is surely large than <200 about
5 years ago. And we have more contributors via git-powered
proxy-maintaining now. Of course we need more people engaged and by
all means new developers are welcomed.

But the real problem is in package complexity rise. Not only number
of packages is being increased, but they became more and more
complex, sometimes insane. Large packages often reinvent wheels by
creating their own build systems, tools, complex bootstrapping and
even bundling of their own compilers which can't be unbundled in a
sane way. Sometimes I have a feeling that software developers have
a global contest on the most crazy and b0rked build system.

Even Debian has similar issues these days (lack of the manpower to
support over complex stuff)[4].

[1] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/30e5a50efa8d99d16ffc8dc2e0016557
[2] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/5bc0c48c37c89dba2893389d6f66a240
[3] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/317b71385ff0d853a6a11bac66a408ed
[4] https://lists.debian.org/debian-science/2016/05/msg00134.html

Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko