Picking up the pieces

May 30, 2011 · Posted in Gentoo, Linux · 6 Comments

Lately I’ve been doing some “undertaker” work. Many of you might not be aware of that so let me explain that to you. When a developer is slacking without apparent reason, someone has to poke him about his status. This is usually done by sending two e-mails before declaring him officially away and let the infrastructure people disable his account etc. When we retire a developer, all of his packages are going to the notorious maintainer-needed list. Unless a developer picks some of these packages, they will remain on tree as long as no outstanding bugs appear on bugzilla. In this case, treecleaners will remove them. However, since the very beginning as a developer, I tried to be as close to users as possible. This is why I act as a proxy to quite a lot of them. This actually makes me feel happy and more useful, than playing solo if I may say. So, when we retire a developer, someone has to take care of his packages, reassing bugs etc. What I usually do is to search through the open bugs for easy fixes like stabilization requests or bugs that have a patch attached. This is actually a 2′ fix that would make another user happy :) But that is not enough. In my opinion, portage is growing much faster that we can handle, leaving too much craft behind in case someone retires. Quite a lot of herds are almost empty, so packages are maintained by a single developer not by a group of them. So, when he retires, nobody is taking care of his packages anymore.

In a few weeks we have council elections and everyone will start promising shiny stuff for Gentoo, but nobody actually understands that new cool stuff cannot hide deeper fundamental problems. A year ago I have requested monthly status updates from every project, just to know which of them are dead and act as appropriate. Obviously nothing happened, and this is why we have a lot of open bug assigned to dead projects that nobody is ever gonna fix. I am seriously considering a run for Gentoo Council this year, but not to promise “yet another git migration and uber-cool shiny tools”. Maybe it is time to stop pretending that everything works perfectly and that we are awesome. We focus too much on technical stuff without caring about our PR and our users overall. Well, not as much as we could anyway. I have a strong feeling that we are a small group of developers who are just developing cool stuff for themselves. Many of you (especially the devs) might not agree with me, but please take a look on bugzilla. There are thousands of open bugs with a 2′ fix attached. Half of them are assigned to dead projects ( why?! ) and other are just there waiting for someone like me ( I think Patrick is fixing packages here and there too) to run through them and fix them. Why?? This is really demotivating. I guess there is a reason that Gentoo developers retire after 2 years of service ( on average ).

Tags: council, Gentoo, undertakers

Planning the future

May 23, 2011 · Posted in Life · 2 Comments

This is probably the first of a series of posts regarding my personal future not only as a Gentoo developer but as an individual as well :). However, this first post is not related to Gentoo so you may skip it if you expect shiny Gentoo news :)

It’s been a while since I found a job as a graduate student. My new job starts in October and I must say I am really excited about that :). So no more exams, no more studying of subjects that I am not particularly interested in, no more classes. I will be in Leeds for the next 3 years, doing something that I really love, and get payed. Awesome :D. I haven’t really started looking for an apartment yet but I plan to do so as soon as I finish with my exams. So if you have any info regarding apartments or anything else related to Leeds, feel free to leave a comment :)

Staying here for the next three years, implies that I have to get used to being away from Greece. Given the current circumstances, I must admit that I don’t feel sad *at all*. Ok, maybe a little… Greece is almost broke, because of incapable politicians and social services. This is why more and more young people leave Greece and go abroad. Greece is probably the only country that hates young people so much. It constantly refuses to “take advantage” of them without apparent reason. So, “immigrants” like me go far far away to seek a better future. Hey I am an immigrant :D. I am honored. No seriously, I feel so lucky that my parents provided me with all the means to go and study abroad so I can have a better future. At least a more decent future that I would ever had in Greece :). I am gonna miss Greece ( I will try to visit of course ). If only I could take all the people I love with me…

Tags: Gentoo, life