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steveL
Watchman
Joined: 13 Sep 2006
Posts: 5153
Location: The Peanut Gallery
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 Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2017 12:04 am Post subject: |
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| R0b0t1 wrote: | Most people likely have no idea what is useful.
..
For the average user when something doesn't work they just give up. |
| desultory wrote: | | ?Users who give up immediately whenever anything does not work are virtually guaranteed to make poor contributors, even in passing (which would almost by definition be their expected manner of interacting much less contributing). |
++
Gentoo is not for the "average" end-user, nor for "most people"; it's a tool for sysadmins and "power-users" who want full control over what lands on their machines.
Sure, they can in turn have end-users (many "users" are sysadmins), but they stand in between, and take point.
I agree a bit more on the arch-specific aspects of the handbook, but I think you're way off-base when it comes to the target "user" for Gentoo. |
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R0b0t1
Apprentice
Joined: 05 Jun 2008
Posts: 264
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| Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2017 12:08 am Post subject: |
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| desultory wrote: | | R0b0t1 wrote: | | Most seemed to give up. |
Give up after having done what? It is exceedingly hard to formulate improvements to a system when the failure points are unknown. |
Giving up after having done the work or at least having identified the problem.
| IRC User wrote: | | <*> Yeah that was for my cygwin32 revival effort. It actually went pretty well but I lost interest before I got everything upstream. |
And this is far from the first time I have heard something like this. A user will get something working but nobody ever learns of it because the user is not interested in a red-tape obstacle course. |
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desultory
Bodhisattva
Joined: 04 Nov 2005
Posts: 9410
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| Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2017 3:35 am Post subject: |
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| R0b0t1 wrote: | | Giving up after having done the work or at least having identified the problem. |
Giving up on getting a fix upstream because of difficulty in finding a suitable contact is a fixable problem and should be treated as such; giving up on getting an existing fix upstream due to lack of motivation is not and should not be treated as such; giving up after having identified a problem could simply mean that it was found to be too much effort to fix that system in that way, whether that is a problem or not and whether it is fixable or not vary between cases.
| R0b0t1 wrote: | | IRC User wrote: | | <*> Yeah that was for my cygwin32 revival effort. It actually went pretty well but I lost interest before I got everything upstream. |
And this is far from the first time I have heard something like this. A user will get something working but nobody ever learns of it because the user is not interested in a red-tape obstacle course. |
From your quote, the implication is that they got at least some of it upstream; which further implies that the rest of the finished but not yet upstreamed work is quite possibly still available in a bug tracker, mailing list, or pull request somewhere. |
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R0b0t1
Apprentice
Joined: 05 Jun 2008
Posts: 264
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| Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2017 5:27 am Post subject: |
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| desultory wrote: | | Giving up on getting a fix upstream because of difficulty in finding a suitable contact is a fixable problem and should be treated as such; giving up on getting an existing fix upstream due to lack of motivation is not and should not be treated as such; giving up after having identified a problem could simply mean that it was found to be too much effort to fix that system in that way, whether that is a problem or not and whether it is fixable or not vary between cases. |
- I never said it wasn't fixable, but even if attempts have been made to fix it, people giving up on getting changes upsteamed indicates it might still be an issue.
- The person was motivated to create the fix which should hopefully be most of the work. If not, then that means bureaucracy is most of the work.
- The person who identified the problem may not have been able to fix it, but that does not mean no one would be able to. It may simply be the case that no one wants to listen.
| desultory wrote: | | From your quote, the implication is that they got at least some of it upstream; which further implies that the rest of the finished but not yet upstreamed work is quite possibly still available in a bug tracker, mailing list, or pull request somewhere. |
Possibly, but even if the work is accessible in some way it's still very hard if not impossible to find.
At this point the conversation has gone full circle. I'm repeating what I said earlier in what is, hopefully, a more understandable form. At the same time it is obvious to me you are now on the offensive and are looking for reasons not to believe me or attempting to justify what I am saying as irrelevant. In a sense that is part of a healthy discussion, but the way some of the other posts presented the question of "what can the project do better?" means parties interested in learning what issues potential contributors might have should be willing to listen to information given by those people. Help is being asked for, it is being provided, and is being ignored.
If you don't want help that is fine. I will go do something else, like so many before me.
A number of years ago I suspect some developers in IRC invited me to apply to become a developer.[1] I wasn't interested at the time because some Gentoo developers do not seem very friendly. This potential abrasiveness seems to stem from nobody wanting to ever seem wrong. Not wanting to be wrong is the same as not wanting help.
[1]: I may have misread the situation, but if there is another explanation as to why two developers would be discussing how to become a developer with each other in my presence I'd like to hear it. The conversation was odd. |
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NeddySeagoon
Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54834
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2017 9:53 am Post subject: |
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R0b0t1,
| R0b0t1 wrote: | | The person was motivated to create the fix which should hopefully be most of the work. If not, then that means bureaucracy is most of the work. |
That's somewhat simplistic. Creating a fix or a workaround that works under some well controlled circumstances, for one particular user may not be terribly difficult.
Creating a generalised production ready fix is a lot harder. Many of my own Pi3 workarounds never see the public light of day outside of #gentoo-arm
I'm interested in making it work but less so in the polishing to make the work production ready so a PR would be accepted.
I'm sure Gentoo has a lot of users like me. I don't have commit access to the ebuild repository.
I'll pick you up on | R0b0t1 wrote: | | The person who identified the problem may not have been able to fix it, but that does not mean no one would be able to. It may simply be the case that no one wants to listen. |
I find arm64 issues I can't fix but almost nobody uses arm64 yet, so I know that sympathy will be minimal.
Its just not good use of limited resources to fix thtings that almost nobody uses.
More mainstream bugs, will not be missed. There is a lot more shouting about amd64.
_________________
Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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R0b0t1
Apprentice
Joined: 05 Jun 2008
Posts: 264
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| Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2017 9:24 pm Post subject: |
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| NeddySeagoon wrote: | R0b0t1,
| R0b0t1 wrote: | | The person was motivated to create the fix which should hopefully be most of the work. If not, then that means bureaucracy is most of the work. |
That's somewhat simplistic. Creating a fix or a workaround that works under some well controlled circumstances, for one particular user may not be terribly difficult.
Creating a generalised production ready fix is a lot harder. Many of my own Pi3 workarounds never see the public light of day outside of #gentoo-arm
I'm interested in making it work but less so in the polishing to make the work production ready so a PR would be accepted.
I'm sure Gentoo has a lot of users like me. I don't have commit access to the ebuild repository. |
The only problem I have with the above is that those standards are not applied consistently. Some developers are very attentive to their work, but others either are not or are simply unlucky and do not encounter edge cases that break user's systems. At the end of the day a lot of users seem to have the same attention to detail that developers have, and if they were developers their additions would likely be streamlined.
As I said earlier with the handbook: Developers retain editorial control and are very proud of that privilege, but a lot of the time they do not have the time or the inclination to exercise it. The times that they do it can make people feel like they are being made to jump through hoops. I can't be the only one who has noticed things that seem to indicate a double standard.
| NeddySeagoon wrote: |
I'll pick you up on | R0b0t1 wrote: | | The person who identified the problem may not have been able to fix it, but that does not mean no one would be able to. It may simply be the case that no one wants to listen. |
I find arm64 issues I can't fix but almost nobody uses arm64 yet, so I know that sympathy will be minimal.
Its just not good use of limited resources to fix thtings that almost nobody uses.
More mainstream bugs, will not be missed. There is a lot more shouting about amd64. |
Right, I am not saying everything will be fixed. That is much the reason I gave up trying to use Gentoo on arm64.
However even for amd64 there are some issues that various users will ask about over a matter of months and the inquirer will be pointed towards a string of forum posts or some random patches or an overlay with custom work. The fix may end up existing in that form for years. That a developer doesn't pick it up is reasonable; no developer may use that configuration, but I am trying to say that Gentoo developers should ask the question "Why did no one submit it for consideration?" |
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1clue
Advocate
Joined: 05 Feb 2006
Posts: 2569
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| Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2017 1:47 pm Post subject: |
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| R0b0t1 wrote: | | NeddySeagoon wrote: | R0b0t1,
| R0b0t1 wrote: | | The person was motivated to create the fix which should hopefully be most of the work. If not, then that means bureaucracy is most of the work. |
That's somewhat simplistic. Creating a fix or a workaround that works under some well controlled circumstances, for one particular user may not be terribly difficult.
Creating a generalised production ready fix is a lot harder. Many of my own Pi3 workarounds never see the public light of day outside of #gentoo-arm
I'm interested in making it work but less so in the polishing to make the work production ready so a PR would be accepted.
I'm sure Gentoo has a lot of users like me. I don't have commit access to the ebuild repository. |
The only problem I have with the above is that those standards are not applied consistently. Some developers are very attentive to their work, but others either are not or are simply unlucky and do not encounter edge cases that break user's systems. At the end of the day a lot of users seem to have the same attention to detail that developers have, and if they were developers their additions would likely be streamlined.
As I said earlier with the handbook: Developers retain editorial control and are very proud of that privilege, but a lot of the time they do not have the time or the inclination to exercise it. The times that they do it can make people feel like they are being made to jump through hoops. I can't be the only one who has noticed things that seem to indicate a double standard.
| NeddySeagoon wrote: |
I'll pick you up on | R0b0t1 wrote: | | The person who identified the problem may not have been able to fix it, but that does not mean no one would be able to. It may simply be the case that no one wants to listen. |
I find arm64 issues I can't fix but almost nobody uses arm64 yet, so I know that sympathy will be minimal.
Its just not good use of limited resources to fix thtings that almost nobody uses.
More mainstream bugs, will not be missed. There is a lot more shouting about amd64. |
Right, I am not saying everything will be fixed. That is much the reason I gave up trying to use Gentoo on arm64.
However even for amd64 there are some issues that various users will ask about over a matter of months and the inquirer will be pointed towards a string of forum posts or some random patches or an overlay with custom work. The fix may end up existing in that form for years. That a developer doesn't pick it up is reasonable; no developer may use that configuration, but I am trying to say that Gentoo developers should ask the question "Why did no one submit it for consideration?" |
FWIW the consistency issue and developer laziness applies not only to Gentoo but all of Open Source and much of commercial software too. I've had driver support issues for oddball hardware even on Windows and Mac OS X. |
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Watsoon
n00b
Joined: 05 Feb 2017
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2017 12:11 pm Post subject: |
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Hello. What about this bug https://bugs.gentoo.org/612178 ?
At the website packages.gentoo.org some package's versions are duplicated. For example - gcc, firefox.
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Reported: 2017-03-10 07:46 UTC by Ulrich Müller
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Assignee: Gentoo Packages Website
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This was reported 6 months ago, but is not yet fixed. Are there any developers? |
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sevendogs
n00b
Joined: 25 Mar 2017
Posts: 5
Location: Texas
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| Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2017 6:08 pm Post subject: |
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| Fitzcarraldo wrote: | | Irre wrote: | | The PC is dying, while RaspBerries, mobile phones, smart TV and handheld computers etc are being more common. I want to see an easy to install Gentoo for these new common devices. |
I don't think the PC is dying. We may read that PC sales have fallen for the last five years in a row, but the reasons for that are more complex than simply the purchase of smartphones, smart TVs, tablets, etc. The fact is, the historical reasons for buying a new PC every couple of years no longer apply; people and corporations can hang on to their existing desktop PCs and laptop PCs much longer these days:
Why Moore's Law, not mobility, is killing the PC
The Real Reason No One's Buying PCs Anymore: They've Gotten Too Good
Before the advent of the smartphone and smart TV, my house had a PC and traditional TV, and some family members had laptops. These days my house has a PC (well two, if you count my server) and a smart TV and a tablet, and family members have laptops and smartphones. So the PC and laptops have not been replaced by the new gadgetry, they have been supplemented by it.
As to the topic of the thread, I believe Gentoo will not die out, because it is rather unique and there will always be a group of people -- albeit a niche -- who enjoy the challenge of developing and using it rather than a mainstream, binary distribution. Apart from the additional control Gentoo offers those who are prepared to put in the extra effort to use it (yes, there certainly is more effort than using a mainstream distribution), I think some people just prefer not to go with the flow, and seek something different. There is nothing wrong with that. |
Couldn't have said it better myself. PCs these days are very powerful and are very good quality (for the most part) so last a long time. My current PC is commercial, tremendously overpowered for what I do with it but it is 7 years old and I would be very hard pressed to find something reasonable today that can match it in performance. For my use cases, a smart phone just won't cut it: I can check email, do banking, sure, but working on photographs, playing games, writing, I refuse to do on a smart phone.
Been using Gentoo on and off since its inception - trying to stick with it now (instead of hopping) because I am comfortable with it and I really do like it.
_________________
When asked "Are you a god or a man?" the Buddha replied "I am awake." |
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1clue
Advocate
Joined: 05 Feb 2006
Posts: 2569
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| Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 1:44 pm Post subject: |
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| Watsoon wrote: | Hello. What about this bug https://bugs.gentoo.org/612178 ?
At the website packages.gentoo.org some package's versions are duplicated. For example - gcc, firefox.
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Reported: 2017-03-10 07:46 UTC by Ulrich Müller
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Assignee: Gentoo Packages Website
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This was reported 6 months ago, but is not yet fixed. Are there any developers? |
Have you ever browsed the bug database for Microsoft Office products? There are bugs in there that are years old and that they never intend to fix.
Edit: There are bugs in there that external developers have provided patches to fix, that will never be applied to the final product because nobody at Microsoft cares enough to do it. |
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Tony0945
Watchman
Joined: 25 Jul 2006
Posts: 5127
Location: Illinois, USA
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| Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 2:15 pm Post subject: |
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| 1clue, is that your standard? Microsoft quality? |
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1clue
Advocate
Joined: 05 Feb 2006
Posts: 2569
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| Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 2:43 pm Post subject: |
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| Tony0945 wrote: | | 1clue, is that your standard? Microsoft quality? |
No, I just used it as an example of software most people consider to be bullet proof, but it has lots of known bugs.
All software complex enough to do real work has bugs. The bugs can be known or unknown, serious or nearly irrelevant or anywhere in between. Developers look at the bugs and prioritize them, and work on the most serious bugs first. Some things they decide are not important enough to fix, and others they decide are due to some library and can't be fixed until the library is fixed. They may submit a patch or create a bug report in the library's bug database, or not.
Or it can be because nobody cares, the way speculation on this thread has been.
If you're not a developer and not working with developers, then chances are you don't know how this works. |
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Ant P.
Watchman
Joined: 18 Apr 2009
Posts: 6920
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| Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 6:12 pm Post subject: |
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| 1clue wrote: | Have you ever browsed the bug database for Microsoft Office products? There are bugs in there that are years old and that they never intend to fix.
Edit: There are bugs in there that external developers have provided patches to fix, that will never be applied to the final product because nobody at Microsoft cares enough to do it. |
Sounds a lot like my experience with KDE... |
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desultory
Bodhisattva
Joined: 04 Nov 2005
Posts: 9410
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| Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 2:44 am Post subject: |
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| Watsoon wrote: | Hello. What about this bug https://bugs.gentoo.org/612178 ?
At the website packages.gentoo.org some package's versions are duplicated. For example - gcc, firefox.
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Reported: 2017-03-10 07:46 UTC by Ulrich Müller
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Assignee: Gentoo Packages Website
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This was reported 6 months ago, but is not yet fixed. Are there any developers? |
The search functionality on Youtube has had the same sort of problem for some time, does Alphabet not have any developers? |
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1clue
Advocate
Joined: 05 Feb 2006
Posts: 2569
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| Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 2:30 pm Post subject: |
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It's how development works. Some bugs they fix right away, some they fix later, some they're working on a replacement for the entire module, sometimes they just don't think it's worth the trouble to fix at all.
All development, everywhere. My Microsoft example was just to give perspective for open/closed source.
I see people bitching about this sort of thing all the time. Software is a moving target. It will never be perfect, because life is never perfect. Do the best you can, and get over it. |
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ArneBab
Guru
Joined: 24 Jan 2006
Posts: 429
Location: Graben-Neudorf, Germany
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| Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2017 6:49 am Post subject: |
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This thread encouraged me to get off the couch, create an ebuild for chg and file a bug for it.
Because we cannot expect others to add the packages we need if we don’t get up and add packages others may need, too.
Thank you!
_________________
Being unpolitical means being political without realizing it. - Arne Babenhauserheide ( http://draketo.de )
pkgcore: So fast that it feels unreal - by doing only what is needed. |
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charles17
Advocate
Joined: 02 Mar 2008
Posts: 3685
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| Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2017 7:12 am Post subject: |
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| ArneBab wrote: | | This thread encouraged me to get off the couch, create an ebuild for chg and file a bug for it. |
Chances to get it merged were better if you created a pull request for it. |
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Mr. T.
Guru
Joined: 26 Dec 2016
Posts: 477
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| Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2017 5:33 pm Post subject: |
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Do you use unofficial repositories? Why are some ebuilds not integrated in the Portage tree?
I ask these questions because I feel that the information is scattered everywhere (Gentoo Wiki [articles, Gentoo projects], Gentoo forums, Gentoo Bugzilla, etc).
I have the impression that the dispersion is stronger than the coherence. For example, the Overlay Project page does not even mention that ebuilds could eventually
be integrated into the Portage tree. Nevertheless, the ebuild repository article mentions the Proxy Maintainer project.
Edit: In other words, how to rely on unofficial repositories? I guess it's about identifying what works better or worse. Gentoo-based distributions were probably created for that. |
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desultory
Bodhisattva
Joined: 04 Nov 2005
Posts: 9410
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| Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 3:35 am Post subject: |
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| ArneBab wrote: | This thread encouraged me to get off the couch, create an ebuild for chg and file a bug for it.
Because we cannot expect others to add the packages we need if we don’t get up and add packages others may need, too.
Thank you! |
Excellent.
| helecho wrote: | | Do you use unofficial repositories? |
If local bespoke repositories are counted, yes. There is exceedingly little reason to avoid doing so within reason, though excessive use can cause problems ranging form trivial to nigh intractable.
| helecho wrote: | | Why are some ebuilds not integrated in the Portage tree? |
Because not all need to be, and indeed there are nontrivial quantities of ebuilds that are not meant to be integrated directly into gentoo.git. A significant portion of those which I maintain locally are deliberately not suitable for inclusion in the tree, and indeed generally have sufficiently small expected audience sizes that they are not made available as a public overlay via the canonical list.
| helecho wrote: | I ask these questions because I feel that the information is scattered everywhere (Gentoo Wiki [articles, Gentoo projects], Gentoo forums, Gentoo Bugzilla, etc).
I have the impression that the dispersion is stronger than the coherence. For example, the Overlay Project page does not even mention that ebuilds could eventually
be integrated into the Portage tree. Nevertheless, the ebuild repository article mentions the Proxy Maintainer project. |
By the time one is in a position to be making use of the services offered by the Overlays project, one would canonically have already learned of the Proxy Maintainers project and decided, for whatever reasons) to not avail themselves of their services.
| helecho wrote: | | Edit: In other words, how to rely on unofficial repositories? I guess it's about identifying what works better or worse. Gentoo-based distributions were probably created for that. |
Find a repository that scratches an itch and seems sufficiently trustworthy; then make use of it, possibly even contribute to it directly. |
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Mr. T.
Guru
Joined: 26 Dec 2016
Posts: 477
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| Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 12:40 pm Post subject: |
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Thank you, desultory!
I need to search some information in the forums. I wonder how to know if a contribution will be useful?
Finding information is sometimes not obvious. In the following case, we may use eix to search in the external repositories if we have already heard about eix.
It will be noted that the Gentoo Handbook does not introduce eix.
| Code: | root # eix-remote update
...
root # eix -R dc3dd
[1] "0x4d4c" layman/0x4d4c
[2] "spike" layman/spike
root # |
Edit: My main thought is that I believe the information is scattered!
helecho. |
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krinn
Watchman
Joined: 02 May 2003
Posts: 7470
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2017 10:35 am Post subject: |
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i don't use eix myself, i dislike its output, and while some of its features might help me, i manage to do what i want (harder?) without using it.
it's a matter of taste, so the handbook should cite all tools from app-portage? Too much information is not good. |
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Mr. T.
Guru
Joined: 26 Dec 2016
Posts: 477
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2017 12:40 pm Post subject: |
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| krinn wrote: | i don't use eix myself, i dislike its output, and while some of its features might help me, i manage to do what i want (harder?) without using it.
it's a matter of taste, so the handbook should cite all tools from app-portage? Too much information is not good. |
We may write "another manual" if there is enough structured content (e.g. Complete AMD64 Handbook).
Edit: In other words, this information could be inserted in the "Sytem Administration" section of the Complete AMD64 Handbook!
Edit: Of course, we may find good documentation about Portage tools on the Wiki. |
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desultory
Bodhisattva
Joined: 04 Nov 2005
Posts: 9410
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| Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2017 3:59 am Post subject: |
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| helecho wrote: | | I wonder how to know if a contribution will be useful? |
As per the instructions for those seeking the position of meditation coach: apply within. If it is useful to you, it is likely to be useful to others, outside of certain peculiar cases which crop up at times, the trick is spotting those cases and leaving them out of your queue for passing upstream.
| helecho wrote: | Finding information is sometimes not obvious. In the following case, we may use eix to search in the external repositories if we have already heard about eix.
It will be noted that the Gentoo Handbook does not introduce eix. |
It does, though rather backhandedly, that could probably stand improving. |
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