-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Tiziano Müller wrote: | Marius Mauch wrote: | |> Moving the discussion to -dev per leios request. |> |> On Wed, 21 May 2008 23:42:19 +0200 |> Marius Mauch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: |> |>> As this topic jus came up in #-dev, and most people there seemed to |>> agree with me I thought it might be worth to bring this topic up |>> again. The topic is that I think that the whole 'herd' concept we're |>> using is a huge mess and should be removed. Now before eveyone starts |>> screaming, lets look at what this concept actually is, as many people |>> are quite confused by it: |>> |>> 1) a herd is a group of packages (not a group of people) |>> 2) the herds.xml file is used to assign people and mail aliases as |>> maintainers of a given herd. Unfortuntely the syntax there give |>> the impression that those people/mail aliases actually form the herd |>> 3) the <herd> tag in metadata.xml is used to assign a package to a |>> certain group. |>> 4) the <maintainer> tag in metadata.xml can be used to assign |>> individual maintainers for a package in addition to/instead of the |>> herd maintainers |>> 5) the combination of 2), 3) and 4) is used to determine the |>> maintainers of a given package |>> |>> Now most people will be familiar with 5) to some degree, and that is |>> actually the only valid use case for the herd concept that I'm aware |>> of. Or has anyone some use case where you'd like to know what herd a |>> package belongs to, but don't care about by whom that herd is |>> maintained? |>> If we can agree that this is the only real use case for the herd |>> concept, then I think the concept is quite useless as it's just a |>> redundant layer of indirection. You could just list mail aliases |>> directly as maintainers, without having to consult herds.xml first. | While I think the herds concecpt is somewhat useless, I'd rather like to see | something like this instead: | | <maintainer> | <team>foobar</team> | </maintainer> | | This makes it clear that it is a team instead of a person (where <name> | would have been used) | | And the herds.xml isn't completely useless, but I'd rather name it teams.xml | and list the teams there. This way we can validated the team mentioned in | <team>...</team> against the list of available teams and make sure the | complete thing is valid (can be done in the current metadata.dtd or in a | future metadata.xsd). | (If we're gonna re-use the <email>...</email> element for the herd-alias, we | can never validate it. And I'm personally for the: "if something can be | automatically validated, it should be") |
I am also for renaming or making clear that these are 'teams' instead f 'herds'[0]. Unless a team can maintain several herds, I find the term 'herd' confusing and better understood as 'team' instead. My 2 cents. [0]http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/metastructure/herds/herds.xml - -- Luis F. Araujo "araujo at gentoo.org" Gentoo Linux -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkg1HX4ACgkQNir3WYj9aLp6xQCghXkp7wZS4XMjx/xKtinOMzRk xpkAoI9TqpYukYUQZ8FD3HmiyLSFs8W+ =xAMS -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
