[arch-dev-public] [arch-dev] going to start a new ArchLinux?

[James]

On 5/9/07, Andreas Radke <a.radke at arcor.de> wrote:
> congratulation. we have won!
>
> our gcc-gcj is broken due to a major feature addon the developer made
> right before he orphaned it. we (Hussam who does i686 rc packages and
> me) are no more able to build OpenOffice.org standing a few days before
> the 2.2.1 release candidate. this is not to blaim that developer but for
> any other developer and all users not using the testing repo.
>
> but this is only the peak of all the chaotic "development" as we call
> it. untill now we used have one ArchLinux tree now having two
> architectures officially supported (i686+x86_64) based on simplicity and
> pacman repo manager as its basic parts. Having the latest stable package
> version was the goal. we have put more and more packages into the
> current+extra repos. important packages we want to test for a while in
> our "testing" repos. sadly it's not worth the name. almost nobody uses
> it. even not all developers as highly recommended. continously we put
> packages with major issues into the stable repos.
>
> we from the x86_64 port are only 2 guys rebuilding and maintaining
> ~2500 packages. we have not the power and possebility to change
> anything important.
>
> from my point of view we have passed a point where this concept won't
> work anymore. we have a poor developement infrastructure compared to
> other distributions. we slow down our package release process due to
> many developers beeing busy with other things (real life and more). but
> then we force us to push things very quickly into the repos to satisfy
> our own old goals.
>
> well. not more with me beeing responsible for the Arch x86_64 port.
>
> some ways are possible:
>
> 1) improve the infrastructure and increase the manpower of developers
> and packagers for all supported dramatically. we are trying that for
> over a year now without any noticable real success.

agreed. there's a lot of talk on that (and I cringe every time i say
that, because I add to it) but it's only now that people are doing,
stuff.

> 2) dramatically lower the work(=less binary packages) for the devs to
> give them time for making packages of a better quality. doubt came up
> as Arch should remain a supported binary distribution in most parts.

i think [extra] needs a solid culling. There's a lot of packages there
with negligable audience. [community] is worse.

> 3) new goals for ArchLinux: accept to have not well tested packages
> when we want to keep the update speed or accept a lower speed on update
> to get new packages better tested.
>
> 4) split the goals we have! let's have one more conservative stable
> rolling rellease tree for higher quality and one on the bleading edge
> front accepting it might break sometime.

we dont have any goals. Look around on the website, wiki, everywhere.
This is something we MUST define, otherwise we're blindly bumbling
around.

> there is only one working other distribution based on pacman out
> claiming having a stable tree. I've talked to several devs and users
> and they can imagine that a stable distribution by ArchLinux can become
> a successor.

that'd be cool. Unstable sucks.

> I'm going to start a new project based on what we now call ArchLinux
> for a new more stable but easy to maintain distribution. I would like to
> do this for ArchLinux. But I have also no problem if you totally dislike
> that and say it's a NoGo under the name of ArchLinux.

if you implement the architecture, package it all up, prove it works,
that'd be cool. Going as far as a releasing a whole new distro, not
so. I think it's overkill to prove a point.

Right now im screaming, WE NEED A WHITEBOARD. It'd be so awesome if we
could meet in one room and work on this, an Arch hackathon. With a
massive whiteboard.

James
-- 
iphitus // Arch Developer // iphitus.loudas.com