Public SourceMage Discussion List

["Andraž 'ruskie' Levstik" <ruskie AT mages.ath.cx>]

On 0:09:12 2007-01-12 Stephan Erb <steve-e AT h3c.de> wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> You asked for more user feedback and here you go. I don't want to be
> offensive but just let you know what I think and what experiences I make
>  using SGML.
> 
> 1) stable, stable-rc, testing and whatever
> Why should I use your stable-tree? It's outdated and I cannot be sure
> whether all security fixes make it into the grimoire. (You don't fix old
>  software like the debian-sec-team does). Therefore it would be a real
> risk to run it an a productive machine and stupidity to run it on a
> desktop system. And whoever needs it for a PC with no connection to the
> Internet would profit much more if you can offer him working
> "testing-snapshots" regularly.
> 
> Just looking at my MailBox I can see that even you, the developers,
> don't care about stable. (408 commits to master grimoire vs 93 to
> stable(-rc)).
> I propose you to drop it! OpenSource works much better if you do it for
> you, not for a possible but almost non-existing user.
> If you want you can switch back to this development model if you have
> more resources, but currently it doesn't work well.
> 

The thing is it's a choice of the user and we don't try to restrict it.
And currently there is work being done on the next stable and if this works
out it might be so from now on with a 2w/new stable.

> 2) Not sure if it is possible but incremental grimoire update would be
> perfect. The download takes up to 5-6 minutes because of the slow server
> -connection. (using 2mbit connection, yes i have netselect installed and
> enabled)
> 

It has been considered of using direct git checkouts for this but I don't
think anything has been decided as git lives on a different server than the
grimoire downloads. Maybe have an update script that would update  a http
git repo on ibiblio every 6 hours or so might work here.

> 3) prompt-delay
> There are questions that should never be skipped due to this delay. Lets
> assume I cast several spells. I would not have a look at the
> install/compile log, if everything works fine. Therefore I reduce the
> delay not to waste time.
> But very often I miss the important configure questions due to the slow
> update (see above) or because I don't like to sit here for three hours
> to wait for a possible need to interact running cleanse.
> 

Erm so what like a never_skip_query type thing?

> 4) creating own packages
> It is so easy to create own spells but so frustrating to get them into
> the grimoire. I stopped offering my own spells because I once did and
> there was so little reaction. Why should I bother you.
> 

Sometimes it takes time for us to process the bugs but poking a person or
two about the bugs can help.

> 5) reporting bugs
> Bugs can occur everywhere. Nobody should be blamed. But it would be nice
> if you could offer a better bug-reporting-system.
> Bugzilla looks so old and doesn't invite to work with. In addition all
> these different options are confusing and cannot be answered intuitively
> (I prefer the trac-ticketsystem, it is also easier to review how it is
> fixed)
> 

trac system is possibly the worst of the systems I saw. It's half broken
for me but I guess this is a subjective thing.

What I would like to see is a rewamp of our bugzilla setup to be more
streamlined. There's imho way tomuch stuff to fiddle around in the bugs
with...

Maybe add a script something like "bugbear" to sorcery with which one can
report bugs and it would take all the info or most from the sorcery config
when reporting stuff and attach relevant files, figure out relevant
grimoire, spell, arch etc...


> 6) website and doc
> I think you know...
> 
> 7) ledger
> "Source Mage Ledger is a client/server based system that collects and
> processes
> stats about Source Mage GNU/Linux (users, spells, ...).
> Don't hesitate to cast smgl-ledger and upload your stats"
> 
> Sounds much like a privacy issue. I do not want anybody to know what
> software I use and whatever this tool does or might do.
> 
You can always CHECK the data that is sent infact you can even upload the
data packet yourself. And this is an opt-in and it is statistical in
nature. But since I don't know how the database stores this info. I.e. is
it storing it name:box:spell-list or if it has it different I can't comment
on this. I would prefer we acctually got atleast the sources for it all in
a git repo(did anyone start anything on this yet?).

> 
> 
> greetings
> 
> a user


--
Andraž "ruskie" Levstik
Source Mage GNU/Linux Games grimoire guru
Geek/Hacker/Tinker

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