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  • From: Andrew <afrayedknot AT thefrayedknot.armory.com>
  • To: SM-Discuss <sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] Let's make Source Mage not suck!
  • Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2007 22:04:21 -0800

On Thu, Jan 04, 2007 at 03:32:10PM -0800, Eric Sandall wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA512
>
> Andrew wrote:
> <snip>
> > Well, I think it was something vague like "top 25% of spells on
> > ledger. That it wasnt posted supports my point, it was probably part
> > of the problem and led to the aforementioned misunderstanding that
> > all the spells had to get fixed. So yes, there wasnt as formal a list,
> > but you should be able to find posts that allude to this list. What Im
> > suggesting now is that we *do* make that list. I started it (informally)
> > with basesystem. People can add to it with their "one spell" I suggested
> > earlier.
> >
> > -Andrew
> >
>
> So you want our narrow list of spells to be basesystem + a spell for
> each developer?
>

Basically yes. Developers can pick more spells if they want, and not
everyone has to participate, although I think it would be good if everyone
did something, I think a single spell per release isn't too much to ask.
Doesnt have to be a big complex spell, just a spell. It'd be preferable
that you use it, or feel its important. Or, if it has a bug in (that
you can fix).

My aim is to make the process feel more inclusive and transparent. It
should feel like a project-wide venture, and everyone should know whats
going on. Right now, imo, it doesnt really feel that way. The past cycles
felt more like side-projects (like quill or enthrall) where only a few
people participate, and most people largely just observe from the sidelines.

I'd like to get started, rather than talking about it. I have some ideas
on how to make things more obvious and streamlined than they were in
the past, while staying true to the overall process.

Heres the list of basesystem spells:

basesystem bash binutils bison bzip2 console-tools console-data coreutils
cpio dialog diffutils e2fsprogs file findutils flex gawk gcc gettext glibc
gnupg grep grub gzip iana-etc init.d installwatch less lilo locale kbd
m4 make mktemp module-init-tools nano ncurses netconf net-tools patch
perl procps readline sed shadow simpleinit-msb smgl-archspecs smgl-fhs
tar texinfo udev unzip util-linux wget zlib

I included both possibilities for bootloaders and console-tools and also
added udev. If someone wants to double check it, that'd be great.

I'd like to take "tor" and "gdb" as my spells. I like and use both of them
(I also wrote one of the two initial tor spells, which were merged into
the current one). If people want, I can suggest spells for them, rather
than leaving it open-ended (this addresses that some people want more
specific direction). I'll take some of the more sorcery-oriented
basesystem spells too, I really should be more involved with them anyways.

Maybe a good subsequent step would be to start a wiki page with a table
containing the list of spells, for each spell the volunteer for this
cycle, and if they have "signed-off" yet.

"Signing-off" just means that you affirm you've fixed any "gating" bugs w/
the spell and are thus comfortable letting the spell go to stable. A
gating bug is any bug we're not comfortable releasing to stable. I would
say any regressions (the spell fails when it didnt before) are gating. Old
obscure bugs would not be gating, the definition of old and obscure has
to be case-by-case I would imagine. Just to clarify, this is only
inclusive of spells on our list. There can be regressions or whatever
in spells not on the list, we're ignoring those for the time being.

I think having a wiki is useful because people can add spells to
the list themselves, rather than everyone posting here and one person
collecting them. Plus, its clear to anyone, anytime, what work is left
to do, and what spells were actually inspected/supported for a
given release.

For subsequent cycles we'd copy the table and clear the signed-off flags,
add a few new spells. Then branch test and start fixing/signing-off on
things again.

Does this sound reasonable? Assuming no major objections I'll start the
wiki tomorrow, that is, unless someone beats me to it.

-Andrew

--
_________________________________________________________________________
| Andrew D. Stitt | acedit at armory.com | astitt at sourcemage.org |
| irc: afrayedknot | Sorcery Team Lead | ftp://t.armory.com/ |
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