[arch-dev-public] [arch] Archlinux [current] status

[Dan McGee]

Kludging a few emails together here.

> Am Dienstag, 8. Mai 2007 22:30:59 schrieb Tobias Powalowski:
> > Hi
> > something is really going wrong at the moment.
> > People claim for having other interests or not time for doing the packaging
> > work.
> > I start here only with [current] first.
> > Jan quit doing maintenance of important parts of our distro and probably
> > also of doing quite some update tirades through current.
> >
> > Let me stress this, from my point of view Jan and me did the most [current]
> > updates the last weeks, even if we didn't use the software for our own
> > stuff, correct me if im wrong.

I for one do not have access to [current]. I would be plenty willing
to help out with maintenance there, although I am not as keen on
adopting packages. More on this below.

> > We have inactive package maintainers, no doubt.
> > Judd, Dorphell, Aurelien, Gregor, Woody, Arjan
> >
> > It's time to cleanup [current].
> > Orphan all packages of Judd, Dorphell, Aurelien, Gregor
> > 1 week of time to grab what packages you wanna have.
> > Keep in mind it's your job then to test and ensure that the package works!
> > Please one of the enablers do this, or give me the permission to orphan
> > them.

This could make sense, however I would like to state that a single
maintainer of a package may be the wrong way to think about this, even
before we do any kind of repository reorganization. If two people want
to maintain a package, that should not be an issue as long as people
don't have problems when people touch "their" packages.

By the way, a lot of Judd's packages are marked out of date- someone
should take a look at some of these and update if necessary.

> > After that period, look whats left if noone feels responsable for a package
> > make a list of possible drops or try to find one on ML who wants to
> > maintain it. It's better to have 1 maintainer for just 1 package who is
> > active and knows the package well, then 1 who just cross updates because he
> > saw the version bump.

I might disagree with part of this- a roving maintainer that knows and
can test the packages he is updating is still a good thing.

On 5/8/07, Pierre Schmitz <pierre at archlinux.de> wrote:
> Well, I see the point. Perhaps there too much packages in [current] and
> [extra] for too few devs. (compare: there are less packages in [community]
> but we have more active TUs than Devs)

I brought up this exact point a while back and it died on the ML:
<http://archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2007-April/000517.html>

> I don`t see any problem in stripping down [current] and [extra] to only those
> packages which are really used. E.g. there are some experimntal ones like
> beryl, several unstable kernels like ck, beyond, mm etc. which will do well
> in [community].

I agree with this- extra is gigantic right now. Anything that we no
longer feel belongs in extra should get announced to the TU list,
where anyone can claim it if they use it. If not, drop it down to
unsupported.

> Perhaps there should be a guideline which package has to be part of the core
> distribution. For example: if a TU becomes a DEV he often moves all his
> packages to extra. Esspecially for Arch64 this causes some problems because
> we TUs wont be able to help by porting those packages.

I don't think that this should be the norm.

On 5/8/07, Andreas Radke <a.radke at arcor.de> wrote:
> Am Tue, 8 May 2007 14:33:04 -0700 schrieb Tobias Kieslich <tobias at justdreams.de>:
> > 4. Arch64 is a 2 man show, Andy and ise. There should be some more
> > support for them. I really think we should add some people here. ISE,
> > write a mail to Jason to get access to current. Andy, Ise, how many
> > people do you want and do you have suggestions?
>
> we both already have cvs access to all repos. we are still not allowed
> to maintain packages. we are not listed in the dashboard. but if this
> would change we would have to decide how to make i686 devs rebuild the
> packages that are maintained by x86_64 devs.

I tacked this on as a postscript in one of my other emails and no one
responded. I feel like we should not exclude our x86_64 devs from
maintaining packages. This requires a few changes in thought:
1. When you are the maintainer of a package, you are in charge of the
package as a whole in addition to your own architecture. This means
seeking out patches if necessary, etc.
2. People need to release a little control sometimes and not treat a
package as their own. It is the community's package, any capable dev
should be able to decide what is best for the package. If there is
disagreement, then bring it up on the ML.

> also i got dissapointed by some fresh x86_64 users we brought up here
> that left us quicker than we thought.

This should be a big role in deciding future dev/TU consideration,
hopefully, especially for those brought on as package maintainers.

-Dan