Rich Freeman posted on Tue, 16 Aug 2011 08:34:09 -0400 as excerpted: > Considering that we still haven't finished doing all of this for OpenRC > yet, I wouldn't worry about the changes hitting you anytime soon. I'd > consider a lessons-learned from OpenRC that we shouldn't stabilize > packages until AFTER the docs are updated. Otherwise it can tend to > never happen.
As a follower and user of baselayout2/openrc from way back when it was still baselayout-1.13 (who BTW did my own share of bug tracing and filing, sometimes with suggested patches or partial-patches, along the way), and a CC on both the main and docs stabilization bugs, that actually rather mystified me. Originally, all the documentation was supposed to be a blocker for the openrc/baselayout2 stabilization bug, and that made sense. But then the docs folks said the policy was only to document stable, and that they weren't going to document openrc until it was going stable. Which didn't seem to make sense as everybody knew it was a big job, too big to happen in a final push, without "mistakes being made". Plus, by the time the final push came, for a change that big, there would be all sorts of other bugs blocking on openrc going stable, so there'd be no real way to do it properly, particularly with docs as understaffed as it is. I never did see how it was going to work, but shutup, because I was "just a user", and I couldn't see the devs being /that/ stupid, to stabilize without in-place docs or to rush them at the last minute, when so many users would be depending on the docs and the reputation Gentoo /used/ to have for being a Linux bright-spot, in terms of documentation, to the point that users from other distros used to seek out Gentoo docs, and I know that was one of the reason /I/ found Gentoo, particularly since Gentoo and its users were so early out the gate in the xfree86/xorg switchup. But then I saw it happen, and there's STILL openrc docs-related bugs open. I guess that really brought home to me how far Gentoo has fallen from its once exalted status, resting on its laurels... until they've all wilted and been thrown out and there's no more to rest on. That's the real bright spot (aside from his hardened activities which only have a relatively indirect affect on anything I follow closely) I see to swift's return as well, as he has already started tackling some of the related docs bugs. Nothing against the folks, nightmorph in particular, that have been holding down the fort -- I've been on projects when it seemed to be only me at times myself and it NOT easy -- but being the only real active member IS hard, and certainly DOES lead to burnout after awhile, and nightmorph has been exhibiting signs of burnout for two years or more (IIRC council even debated what might be done to help at one point, but without real volunteers, there's not a lot that they could do, except back off a bit on the pressure nightmorph was under, to the extent they could help there). So swift must certainly be a welcome relief for nightmorph, and for the rest of us, even in just the couple days he has been back, there's some docs changes, etc. =:^) -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
