From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jan 8 06:35:25 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0D54410656C2 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2011 06:35:25 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dougb@FreeBSD.org) Received: from mail2.fluidhosting.com (mx22.fluidhosting.com [204.14.89.5]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A8CF98FC19 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2011 06:35:24 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 13178 invoked by uid 399); 8 Jan 2011 06:35:23 -0000 Received: from localhost (HELO doug-optiplex.ka9q.net) (dougb@dougbarton.us@127.0.0.1) by localhost with ESMTPAM; 8 Jan 2011 06:35:23 -0000 X-Originating-IP: 127.0.0.1 X-Sender: dougb@dougbarton.us Message-ID: <4D2805AA.2090700@FreeBSD.org> Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2011 22:35:22 -0800 From: Doug Barton Organization: http://SupersetSolutions.com/ User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD amd64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101210 Thunderbird/3.1.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org References: <4D277E4B.1030006@FreeBSD.org> <4D27840A.8020107@FreeBSD.org> <4D2785A7.7080106@FreeBSD.org> <4D27888F.4090703@FreeBSD.org> <467EA052-70AB-4C4C-B28E-9AD037C8BF14@FreeBSD.org> <4D27A3B8.4070401@FreeBSD.org> <82CF1B3F-B5F0-4B26-A6D1-8767370C1E0E@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <82CF1B3F-B5F0-4B26-A6D1-8767370C1E0E@FreeBSD.org> X-Enigmail-Version: 1.1.2 OpenPGP: id=1A1ABC84 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.org, Ade Lovett Subject: Package building for -current (Was: Re: HEADS UP: Merge of binutils 2.17) X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2011 06:35:25 -0000 I'm happy to have a discussion about this topic either publicly, or privately, your choice. Since your message went to -current@, that's where my reply is headed. I've also cc'ed ports@ since the topic is relevant there too. Meanwhile, I've snipped some of what you wrote to focus on the issues that I think are most relevant. I value and respect both your opinion and your experience in these issues, but I have some rather profound disagreements with your conclusions. On 01/07/2011 21:48, Ade Lovett wrote: > > On Jan 07, 2011, at 17:37 , Doug Barton wrote: >> On 01/07/2011 13:54, Ade Lovett wrote: >>> >>> Most likely it's low priority given all the other exp-runs that >>> affect 7.x/8.x, tweaking things for an 6.x-EOL-tagged tree, and >>> a bunch of other infrastructure stuff. Not to mention the >>> impending 7- and 8- RELEASEs. > > Before I start on this, I would like a few things noted for the > record: > > 1. I have set Reply-To to developers@ (this should be a major hint) > 2. I am not a current member of portmgr@ 3. I requested, and > served, for a very short time, on the first portmgr > > >> That may very well be the case, but if so then it's incumbent on >> portmgr to communicate that. If you check the audit trail you will >> find that they did not. > > Horsecrap. You are taking an individual PR history without reference > to the whole host of things that were also going on at the same time. > Like it or not, when it comes to ports, -STABLE wins over -CURRENT > every single time. I disagree rather profoundly on this point. We have a tolerance/expectation of our leadership just plain not communicating with us that has gone way past unhealthy. It takes 30 seconds to respond to a PR and say "We can't get to this before the pending releases, here is a suggested course of action." That's a perfectly reasonable thing for a person to expect in response to a request. In addition to not responding just being plain rude, it fosters the attitude of "Why should I bother communicating with portmgr, they never respond anyway." Not to mention the fact that occasionally the fact that portmgr doesn't like to communicate can sometimes create actual problems, such as when they removed the MD5 checksum stuff without warning, and therefore broke all the ports management and other tools that depended on them. I was glad of the action to finish the change, but the action came after months of no communication about it at all. >> IMO this is a total red herring, and has been for several years >> now. I run -current every day on my real-work system, and barring >> the occasional hiccup it's been buildable nearly every time I've >> tried. > > Apologies for not being able to drive my email client appropriately. > The issue at hand is one of running -CURRENT. > > There is a distinct, and fundamental difference between running > -CURRENT on a single system, as opposed to a cluster of systems that > are tightly interlinked. Believe it or not, I understand that. I also get that sometimes running package building on -current stresses it in ways that cause it to break. That's a good thing. :) My point is that YEARS of ignoring the problem is not acceptable, and needs to change. For a long time portmgr griped about not having enough systems for the build cluster. Now they have plenty of hardware available, but the problem is that the system is too pointy-hat centric. Apparently significant progress has been made in that area, but none of it seems to have trickled down to actually getting more packages built for more platforms better and faster. I do, honestly, get that this is a hard problem. But if portmgr needs help, it needs to ask for it. It asked for and received more hardware, so clearly the foundation and the FreeBSD community at large is ready to step up to help. I think it's pretty obvious at this point that the gating factor is person-hours, so portmgr needs to be a lot more aggressive in developing new volunteers, asking for help with specific tasks, etc. etc. The fact that they are dealing with hard problems is no longer an acceptable excuse for years of failure to solve them. > Sadly, the only thing I can say to your 4-step procedure, and with > utmost politeness, is that your src-centric views are completely > missing the point. "4. start building ports" is in fact a 20- or > 30-step process to ensure no cross-contamination. Once again, I get that bit too. Since we do, in fact, already have a package building cluster I was handwaving it because I was trying to address your red herring about "we can't find a version of -current we like so we can't even try." The essential points that I'm trying to communicate are: 1. Most of the time HEAD works pretty well nowadays 2. Very few ports care that deeply about the guts of the system they are running on > I look forward to your input and total solutions on how to make this > better. I do. See above. I would love it if the foundation wanted to fund me to spend the amount of time it would take to actually step in and do the work, but I myself cannot do it alone as a volunteer. That's even if portmgr would accept my help which I find rather highly unlikely. My point is not, "I know all the answers," my point is that the solution is not going to come from continuing to ignore the problem; and if portmgr does not currently have the people-bandwidth necessary to address it then it ought to be reaching out to develop it. Doug -- Nothin' ever doesn't change, but nothin' changes much. -- OK Go Breadth of IT experience, and depth of knowledge in the DNS. Yours for the right price. :) http://SupersetSolutions.com/