[arch-general] Weird reaction to pull request over at Arch Linux ARM
Hello list, I'd like to get some feedback on this pull request discussion over at Arch Linux ARM: https://github.com/archlinuxarm/PKGBUILDs/pull/1444 (Backup: http://pastebin.com/x8H0mNiE) Short summary: I wanted to contribute a simple patch to enable support for Banana Pi hardware. I tried that a few years back and got besides some other concerns the answer that it cannot be added, because at this time there were no upstream support and I accepted that. This is no longer the case, so I thought it must be possible to add support now. I also noticed a few other pull request trying exactly that, which were instantly closed by Kevin Mihelich without any reasonable explanation. That's why I expected some resistance and prepared myself to counterargument a few of his concerns. And I think I did quite good. Good enough to make him ignore me. Why am I writing this to the Arch Linux mailing list? Well, for quite some time I thought Arch Linux ARM is Arch Linux. And I think there are a lot more out there who think so. Therefore I think behavior like this could hurt the overall reputation of Arch Linux. Especially if a future goal of Arch Linux might be ARM support and Kevin Mihelich somehow joins the team. Did I miss something? Do I expect too much? I don't know. Thanks Christopher Reimer
On 2017-01-27 19:27, Christopher Reimer wrote:
Therefore I think behavior like this could hurt the overall reputation of Arch Linux. Especially if a future goal of Arch Linux might be ARM support and Kevin Mihelich somehow joins the team.
Even if, it is an independent project and Kevin has every right to decide what he wants to spend his time on. Nothing to do there from Arch perspective. Bartłomiej
On 01/27/2017 01:27 PM, Christopher Reimer wrote:
I also noticed a few other pull request trying exactly that, which were instantly closed by Kevin Mihelich without any reasonable explanation. That's why I expected some resistance and prepared myself to counterargument a few of his concerns.
And I think I did quite good. Good enough to make him ignore me.
Oh, he's ignoring you? I must be imagining this quote:
I am speaking specifically to what is or will be officially supported. The community is free to do whatever it wants outside of official support, and many people do this already for a number of boards. Merely including the package here would imply official support to the vast majority of users despite any 72pt blinking red warnings we could put up state otherwise. This then leads to said users expecting us to fix their problems.
This position is no different than it's been throughout the life of this project. Official support means an active, contributing developer has access to the hardware and can actively develop packages and address issues for that target. The hardware that we choose to spend our time and money on is our own choice, not a decision forced upon us.
And I see nowhere that you have answered this IMO highly reasonable objection.
Why am I writing this to the Arch Linux mailing list? Well, for quite some time I thought Arch Linux ARM is Arch Linux. And I think there are a lot more out there who think so. Therefore I think behavior like this could hurt the overall reputation of Arch Linux. Especially if a future goal of Arch Linux might be ARM support and Kevin Mihelich somehow joins the team.
I fail to see how the actions of an unaffiliated dev of a different project could hurt the Arch Linux reputation, moreso when said actions are reasonable actions. I especially don't see why you feel the need to malign the good name of Mr. Mihelich against the future *possibility* of him joining an official Arch Linux port (which shows far more "ulterior motives" and "weird reactions" in your own actions than in his). On the other hand, you are busy giving this mailing list a reputation for spam. :( We don't care how he slighted you or which neighbor's dog he may or may not have killed, please direct your personal campaigns against the person of Mr. Mihelich ELSEWHERE.
/dev/null
-- Eli Schwartz
On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 12:27 PM, Christopher Reimer <mail@creimer.net> wrote:
Hello list,
I'd like to get some feedback on this pull request discussion over at Arch Linux ARM: https://github.com/archlinuxarm/PKGBUILDs/pull/1444 (Backup: http://pastebin.com/x8H0mNiE)
Short summary: I wanted to contribute a simple patch to enable support for Banana Pi hardware. I tried that a few years back and got besides some other concerns the answer that it cannot be added, because at this time there were no upstream support and I accepted that.
This is no longer the case, so I thought it must be possible to add support now.
I also noticed a few other pull request trying exactly that, which were instantly closed by Kevin Mihelich without any reasonable explanation. That's why I expected some resistance and prepared myself to counterargument a few of his concerns.
And I think I did quite good. Good enough to make him ignore me.
Why am I writing this to the Arch Linux mailing list? Well, for quite some time I thought Arch Linux ARM is Arch Linux. And I think there are a lot more out there who think so. Therefore I think behavior like this could hurt the overall reputation of Arch Linux. Especially if a future goal of Arch Linux might be ARM support and Kevin Mihelich somehow joins the team.
Did I miss something? Do I expect too much? I don't know.
Thanks
Christopher Reimer
This really has nothing to do with the Arch community. Arch ARM is its own project. Now, I'm not a TU or a developer, but in my view trying to complain to an upstream project when downstream doesn't do what a contributor wants reflects more badly on Arch's reputation. Even if people on Arch cared, what could they even do about it? Are you expecting the Arch developers to somehow pull some imaginary authority over the Archlinux ARM project? That'd be even worse to Arch's reputation if they though they could just boss around forks of Arch. The maintainer of a project has zero obligation to take on pull requests. Complaining to Archlinux users about it won't change it, especially when his response to your whining on his GitHub page was reasonable. If you don't like it, feel free to fork Archlinux ARM. Nothing's stopping you. But stopping filling this list with nonsense and your personal problems with the developers of projects Arch has nothing to do with. Yaro
Reading the github thread, I'm not sure you'll be able to change his mind. As said by others, it's his right to reject the support of counterfeit Raspberry Pi's should he want to. I don't think his reasoning makes much sense, but it's his project to do what he wants with. Consider persuing other options to give people the benifits of your work (fork, some sort of patch, etc) On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 2:57 PM, Yaro Kasear <yaro@marupa.net> wrote:
On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 12:27 PM, Christopher Reimer <mail@creimer.net> wrote:
Hello list,
I'd like to get some feedback on this pull request discussion over at Arch Linux ARM: https://github.com/archlinuxarm/PKGBUILDs/pull/1444 (Backup: http://pastebin.com/x8H0mNiE)
Short summary: I wanted to contribute a simple patch to enable support for Banana Pi hardware. I tried that a few years back and got besides some other concerns the answer that it cannot be added, because at this time there were no upstream support and I accepted that.
This is no longer the case, so I thought it must be possible to add support now.
I also noticed a few other pull request trying exactly that, which were instantly closed by Kevin Mihelich without any reasonable explanation. That's why I expected some resistance and prepared myself to counterargument a few of his concerns.
And I think I did quite good. Good enough to make him ignore me.
Why am I writing this to the Arch Linux mailing list? Well, for quite some time I thought Arch Linux ARM is Arch Linux. And I think there are a lot more out there who think so. Therefore I think behavior like this could hurt the overall reputation of Arch Linux. Especially if a future goal of Arch Linux might be ARM support and Kevin Mihelich somehow joins the team.
Did I miss something? Do I expect too much? I don't know.
Thanks
Christopher Reimer
This really has nothing to do with the Arch community.
Arch ARM is its own project. Now, I'm not a TU or a developer, but in my view trying to complain to an upstream project when downstream doesn't do what a contributor wants reflects more badly on Arch's reputation.
Even if people on Arch cared, what could they even do about it? Are you expecting the Arch developers to somehow pull some imaginary authority over the Archlinux ARM project? That'd be even worse to Arch's reputation if they though they could just boss around forks of Arch.
The maintainer of a project has zero obligation to take on pull requests. Complaining to Archlinux users about it won't change it, especially when his response to your whining on his GitHub page was reasonable.
If you don't like it, feel free to fork Archlinux ARM. Nothing's stopping you. But stopping filling this list with nonsense and your personal problems with the developers of projects Arch has nothing to do with.
Yaro
Am 27.01.2017 um 21:41 schrieb Eli Schwartz via arch-general:
On 01/27/2017 01:27 PM, Christopher Reimer wrote:
I also noticed a few other pull request trying exactly that, which were instantly closed by Kevin Mihelich without any reasonable explanation. That's why I expected some resistance and prepared myself to counterargument a few of his concerns.
And I think I did quite good. Good enough to make him ignore me. Oh, he's ignoring you? I must be imagining this quote:
I am speaking specifically to what is or will be officially supported. The community is free to do whatever it wants outside of official support, and many people do this already for a number of boards. Merely including the package here would imply official support to the vast majority of users despite any 72pt blinking red warnings we could put up state otherwise. This then leads to said users expecting us to fix their problems.
This position is no different than it's been throughout the life of this project. Official support means an active, contributing developer has access to the hardware and can actively develop packages and address issues for that target. The hardware that we choose to spend our time and money on is our own choice, not a decision forced upon us.
That seems to be a very reasonable position. If the patch is so simple, then why don't you maintain it and provide the necessary binary packages? You should be able to create a custom user repository for your modifications just like we do for Arch Linux for some kernels. -- Andreas
On 27.01.2017 22:38, ProgAndy wrote:
Am 27.01.2017 um 21:41 schrieb Eli Schwartz via arch-general:
On 01/27/2017 01:27 PM, Christopher Reimer wrote:
I also noticed a few other pull request trying exactly that, which were instantly closed by Kevin Mihelich without any reasonable explanation. That's why I expected some resistance and prepared myself to counterargument a few of his concerns.
And I think I did quite good. Good enough to make him ignore me. Oh, he's ignoring you? I must be imagining this quote:
I am speaking specifically to what is or will be officially supported. The community is free to do whatever it wants outside of official support, and many people do this already for a number of boards. Merely including the package here would imply official support to the vast majority of users despite any 72pt blinking red warnings we could put up state otherwise. This then leads to said users expecting us to fix their problems.
This position is no different than it's been throughout the life of this project. Official support means an active, contributing developer has access to the hardware and can actively develop packages and address issues for that target. The hardware that we choose to spend our time and money on is our own choice, not a decision forced upon us.
That seems to be a very reasonable position. If the patch is so simple, then why don't you maintain it and provide the necessary binary packages? You should be able to create a custom user repository for your modifications just like we do for Arch Linux for some kernels.
I expected something like this. And as a matter of fact I plan to provide all necessary parts on my webspace. I even plan to compile and provide at least all other sunxi based uboot variants. http://c-reimer.de/alarm/ More will come in a few days. When I have time to write a script to make things easier.
-- Andreas
participants (6)
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Bartłomiej Piotrowski
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Christopher Reimer
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Eli Schwartz
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Lord Nyxxie
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ProgAndy
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Yaro Kasear