To hijack the overlay thread, I see a few things here: MOTIVATION:
a) Developers don't like putting experimental stuff in the tree: This is usually because Joe Ricer picks up the ebuild, 'tests' it, it breaks and he files a bug. Joe Ricer has no clue what went wrong or what he is doing and said Developer gets annoyed as hell by Joe Ricer's lack of knowledge/co-operation with regards to bug report. For more popular packages, multiply Joe Ricer by some random two digit number. b) Developers want users to contribute too: Users don't have commit access to the main tree (for good reason, as stated in the other thread). However developers would like users to be able to contribute in some meaningful way to a project/package without the red tape that is bugzilla. PROPOSAL: a) overlays.gentoo.org -> A sub-domain for hosting overlays or 'development sandboxes'. Developers want an area for sandboxed development of packages outside of the main tree. As stated in the previous thread this allows faster developer with less overread (QA, changelogs, etc..). These sandboxed areas also allow non-developers to contribute to projects in a useful manner. b) overlays.gentoo.org -> Is not meant for public consumption by users. overlays.gentoo.org is merely a development aid and not meant for public consumption. Users tend to not know how overlays are implemented. Multiple activated overlays also can cause hard to debug issues as overlays over-ride ebuilds and eclass in each other and the tree itself. c) Overlays may be secured on an per-overlay basis to prevent normal users from both reading and writing to the overlay. For example a project may wish to have an overlay and invite two or three non-developers to contribute. This makes creating small development units easy, while keeping QA the main tree relatively high. This is what I see, and this is kinda what I would want. As an overlay "creator" I should be able to add/remove accounts from my own overlay ( to reduce the load on the overlay project/infra ). In essence, creating a bunch of small communities for development. Thoughts on ideas on this somewhat more focussed idea? ( or at least I think it's more focused :P ) -Alec Warner -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
