Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 21:08:38 +0100 From: Roman Neuhauser <neuhauser@bellavista.cz> To: Mark Murray <mark@grondar.org> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Where is FreeBSD going? Message-ID: <20040107200838.GD86935@freepuppy.bellavista.cz> In-Reply-To: <200401071429.i07ETZMI068819@grimreaper.grondar.org> References: <3FFC03E5.7010305@iconoplex.co.uk> <200401071429.i07ETZMI068819@grimreaper.grondar.org>
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# mark@grondar.org / 2004-01-07 14:29:35 +0000:
> Paul Robinson writes:
> > And for those of you who normally shout "Submit a patch" - well, I'm
> > thinking about it. :-)
>
> I've been thinking of your objection to the "submit a patch" reply,
> and I offer this as a proto-thought on how it can be applied to
> non-coders:
>
> As FreeBSD is a volunteer project, I suspect part of the problem
> is getting said volunteers to do things that they would otherwise
> not do. "Submit a patch" can be easily(?) extendted to cover a much
> wider area of volunteer-organised work than simply code. Under
> specifically _patches_, there are code, documentation and web page
> patches, but there is also a need for organizational skills. The
> PR database frequently gets blitzed by keen folks who get lots of
> PRs closed, follwed by burnout. We are doing rather well with our
> release-engineering team (Go Scott L!), and our currently active
> admin@ crowd are doing a great job, but we could still use skills,
> and these are not necessarily of the coding kind.
Help us (users, port maintainers and random porters w/o commit) help
you (committers).
There are two areas I can (and do in one of them) participate: ports
and documentation. Activities in both areas result in patches, and
those need a committer.
PRs need more hands, more people who can commit stuff. Quite a few
port maintainers could have commit, even limited to just parts of
the ports tree (IOW just their ports).
The ports freeze seems to last too long with recent releses. Or
maybe it's just I've gotten more involved, but out of the last four
months (2003/09/07-today), ports tree has been completely open
for whopping 28 days.
Limitations of CVS don't exactly help either. The fact that you need
direct access to the repository to be able to copy a tree with
history (repocopy) as opposed to this operation being part of the
interface[1], which means being lucky enough to find a committer,
and get them commit the stuff within the blink of an eye ports is
open, further constrains people's ability to work on FreeBSD with
some satisfaction.
While minor stuff can be managed by keeping multiple working copies,
thorough documentation (or just any, really) on setting up local cvs
mirror and using $CVS_LOCAL_BRANCH_NUM is sorely missing; or did I
get it right quite recently that this is discouraged because of
software issues (ISTR it was jdp@ who said it)?
Porter's handbook, and FDP Primer, while valuable (esp. the former)
leave many questions unanswered. (I'm not going to further this
rant, but will gladly provide feedback to anyone who asks.)
[1] has core@ considered subversion (devel/subversion)?
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