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

[James]

Andrew Savchenko <bircoph <at> gentoo.org> writes:

>
> On Sat, 2 Jul 2016 14:00:29 -0400 Rich Freeman wrote:
> > On Sat, Jul 2, 2016 at 1:34 PM, James <wireless <at> tampabay.rr.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.

Since Sunrise is closing down, the attic is not being refreshed and there
is not current github based system like retreiving old codes from the attic,
I think something need to 'arranged' to effect the ability of users to 
retrieve old codes, and work on them, perhaps overlays.


> > 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.

Yes. Well, I'm still struggling with github.

> 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.

Very true. I've ask for a basic github (gentoo centric) wiki doc to 
help folks get accustomed to github. As an older hack it just a new
way of doing things and I'm struggling with those news ways and when to
use which one for github. I know there are often many ways to do things, 
but for folks at my level (strong-user learning the proxy-maint tricks,
there should be a few more docs and well defined ways to do things,
so the basics are routinely possible by just reading and looking at a few
examples. I have no problem digging through the latest version of the
dev-manual, or asking for help.


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

Agreed. Since my interest is running codes on clusters (that I control),
it's just a natural fit to try and help the sys-cluster team by hacking
on older, not critical codes as I learn.  sys-frabric and rDMA is also
a close project to clustering that I am interested in.

Also, working on minimal and embedded systems often has a coder 
use old tools as todays embedded linux systems often resemble systems
from years ago and those old CLI tools and C codes are very often usable.

I routinely go these purge lists and install the codes I want to keep
in /usr/local/portage. I really which there was an attic equivalent 
in github. That would ease a lot of pain, imho.




> Best regards,
> Andrew Savchenko

hth (and thanks Andrew)
James