Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Is it that hard to add a package, or am I doing wrong?
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2018 14:19:46
Message-Id: CAGfcS_=GMFAS+3tZ58nvPcMu43wLN8YJpHOikpCvUP=7qnT_kw@mail.gmail.com
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Is it that hard to add a package, or am I doing wrong? by Nils Freydank
1 On Thu, Dec 20, 2018 at 8:39 AM Nils Freydank <nils.freydank@××××××.de> wrote:
2 >
3 > Am Donnerstag, 20. Dezember 2018, 12:28:17 CET schrieb Nuno Silva:
4 > > On 2018-12-20, YUE Daian wrote:
5 > > > On 2018-12-20 03:50, Nils Freydank <nils.freydank@××××××.de> wrote:
6 > > > [...]
7 > > >> Additionally bugzilla is seen as too impractical to use for new packages
8 > > >> that many don't get much attention there, only on github.com.
9 > > >
10 > > > Well the Gentoo Wiki https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Submitting_ebuilds
11 > > > suggested that new ebuilds should be submitted via Bugzilla.
12 > > >
13 > > > Could you please tell me if it is still the recommended way?
14 > > > If not, IMHO it is better to change Wiki as well to prevent further
15 > > > misunderstanding.
16 >
17 > from my perspective it seems as only github.com is used and bugs.gentoo.org
18 > is more or less just kept as an official way for ebuild submission to keep
19 > a backup mechanism on the own infrastructure.
20
21 IMO this is largely the reality of the situation. The people doing
22 the most work on unmaintained packages or proxy-maintained packages
23 prefer the github PR workflow over bugzilla. But, officially Gentoo's
24 social contract can't rely on that as the official mechanism.
25 Probably wouldn't hurt to at least mention the "alternative" in the
26 wiki article though.
27
28 It is a somewhat contentious issue. But, in the end it boils down to
29 more eyes if you use the unofficial method. Nobody will tell you not
30 to do it the official way.
31
32 > Maybe in a perfect world someone trustworthy could provide a single-sign-on
33 > service for bugtrackers and a gitlab instance hosted by gentoo or stuff like
34 > that, but the current state is quite confusing, agreed.
35
36 IMO issue/PR tracking is a bigger unsolved problem than that. I think
37 we really need a truly distributed solution for this, so that every
38 service like github/gitlab/etc isn't reinventing the wheel here.
39
40 gitlab does have FOSS issue tracking at least. I haven't used it to
41 compare it with bugzilla/etc as to whether it is a viable subsitute.
42 Gitlab.com will offer free hosting to FOSS projects. It has been
43 discussed a bit on the various lists for Gentoo but I think the sense
44 is that it isn't such a huge improvement to be worth a big move. It
45 is more FOSS than Github of course, but of course you can implement
46 the core of github (git itself) as pure FOSS also.
47
48 FWIW I know somebody who has access to all the gitlab source and I
49 trust him when he says that the FOSS community edition is the core of
50 the enterprise edition. Fixes/etc in general always make their way to
51 the FOSS core, and their hosted gitlab.com solution uses the same FOSS
52 code at its core that anybody can download.
53
54 I feel like bugzilla being so centralized is a weakness for most of
55 the FOSS world. If somebody denied Gentoo access to infrastructure
56 that would be a really hard part of the complete solution to replace.
57 The git part is easy - you can do a git-based workflow that is
58 completely distributed without much trouble. What you can't do is
59 clone the issues database, work on a few, push your work on issues to
60 Fred, who pushes it to Sally, and then Sally sends her updates to you
61 along with Joe's, with all of that stuff happening in parallel with
62 merge conflicts handled in a sane manner.
63
64 --
65 Rich