[Mageia-dev] Mirror layout, round two

[Maarten Vanraes]

Op zondag 28 november 2010 18:50:28 schreef Michael scherer:
> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 11:16:57PM +0100, Maarten Vanraes wrote:
> > Op zaterdag 27 november 2010 22:07:43 schreef Michael scherer:
> > > On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 08:23:59PM +0200, Thomas Backlund wrote:
> > > > Jerome Quelin skrev 27.11.2010 19:11:
> > > > >On 10/11/27 17:59 +0100, Maarten Vanraes wrote:
> > > > >and, more importantly: what is the advantage? that is, what does
> > > > >that bring you, except more admin?
> > > > 
> > > > QA!
> > > > and enduser satisfaction.
> > > > 
> > > > Just take a look on many bugreports in MDV Bugzilla.
> > > > If the report is against a nomaintainer@ package, currently Triage
> > > > pretty much only can state "thanks for your report, but since it has
> > > > no maintainer, nothing will probably happend" wich is not good answer
> > > > for a person that have taken the time to report a bug.
> > > 
> > > Then why don't we either :
> > > - decide that non maintened package must be taken care by trainee, as
> > > part of the training
> > > - decide to clean them.
> > 
> > that's a great idea, we need more trainees! but of course, we can't do
> > that with all 5000+ unmaintained packages...
> > 
> > is there a way to get rpm usage stats from those unmaintained packages.
> 
> No. We can only get download stats from mirrors. While it may be biased
> toward some geographical preference ( ie, I doubt many people download
> locale-zh from distrib-coffee ), it can give at least some ideas. Nothing
> precise, but still better than random.
> 
> > > > By having the /extra/ disabled by default, and a popup notifying the
> > > > user if he enables it that the packages are "unmaintained" he knows
> > > > he's "on his own"
> > > 
> > > That's already what the GPL say, basically :)
> > > ( you have no garantee of anything ).
> > > 
> > > Yet, I fail to see what benefit it does really bring to users. Most of
> > > them will enable the media ( because some people enable everything ),
> > > will forget the message ( because we always forget popup, thanks
> > > to endless abuse of such popup ),
> > > and the only benefit is that we could tell "we told you". Not really
> > > satisfying, and if I was a user, it would not really please me, nor
> > > inspire confidence.
> > 
> > some would, but that they'd also enable testing, backports, debug, etc...
> > if they really do so, it's kind of their own fault. i don't think the
> > majority does that. the majority leaves it at default.
> 
> And so the majority will say "$distro is bad because there is not enough
> software".
> 
> > The thing is that you have no guarantee, but the thing is, with mdv,
> > there's too much packages that just don't work; you install it, you
> > click in the menu and nothing happens because it doesn't work.
> 
> So too much is 10%, more ?
> 
> > same thing and one of them is in extra; then i get only one, if i can't
> > find any, i can enable the searching in extra and try to find a package
> > that works.
> > 
> > that's why i personally would prefer to leave these off by default.
> > 
> > > We could avoid adding a media by merging this media with core,
> > > and show the popup when a user install a package without maintainer,
> > > telling either "beware, this package is currently marked as not
> > > maintained, and may be buggy. We will try to do what we can to help in
> > > this case, but no one is officialy in charge" or "we are seeking help
> > > on taking care of this package, if you use it often, please register
> > > on $URL"
> > 
> > this popup will get ignored too; and persons who are perfectly aware of
> > it, will grow irritated.
> 
> Then, we can do a single "do not ask me again", or just show it once ?
> 
> > futhermore: (no separate extra)
> > 
> >  - huge amount of packages (think of the mirrors)
> 
> mirror space is taken with extra or core. So the argument do not stand
> much. Now, this would be a arguent for simply erasing those unmaintained
> packages.
> 
> >  - huge hdlists
> 
> Indeed. But if we want to have people be able to search
> inside like you said you would, this would still be downloaded, be used (
> so in memory ) and on the mirror. So that's also not much a good reason.
> ( however, if we remove them... )


for me this is more or less temporary (except that it's not).

the idea is to supply these, so that the users don't say "there's not enough 
software".

hopefully, when our packaging_noobs grow up, they too will mentor others; so 
that our packaging group will be bigger so we can have more maintained 
packages.

except that there's always unmaintained packages; sometimes these are older 
packages, when there's a newer package that does the same thing, and the older 
is being unmaintained. or even games that have been unmaintained or for 
whatever reason.

just my thoughts.