On Tue, 12 Sep 2023 15:17:00 +0100 Sam James <[email protected]> wrote:
> Rich Freeman <[email protected]> writes: > > > On Tue, Sep 12, 2023 at 9:36 AM Eddie Chapman <[email protected]> > > wrote: > >> in Gentoo. Have any of these 4 maintainers publicly said > >> (anywhere) that they are not interested in being maintainers > >> anymore (which is fine if that is the case)? We're not talking > >> here about a lone maintainer of some peripheral package that's > >> disappeared leaving an orphaned package. > > > > It isn't like somebody is censoring the lists or waging commit wars > > on the metadata.xml/mask file. If somebody was eager to maintain > > it I'm sure they'd have spoken up. > > > >> I'm an outsider to Gentoo development (just a heavy user for over > >> a decade both personally and professionally) so I might have > >> missed something. I just find it puzzling. > > > > I'm not puzzled by what is going on, or by your email, because it > > happens basically anytime a high-profile package is treecleaned. > > Yes, Gentoo is about choice, but somebody has to actually do work > > to make the choices viable. There are always more people > > interested in using software than maintaining it. The frustration > > is completely understandable, but also kinda unavoidable. > > > > Repo QA standards don't mean that it has to barely work for your > > specific use case. The package has to deal with compatibility > > issues with stuff you don't use as well, which is why maintaining a > > system package can be hard work. It is usually less of an issue > > for more ordinary applications, which tend to have fewer > > interactions. If it is "good enough" for you as it is, then just > > move it to a private overlay and keep using it. You probably would > > need to override a virtual or two as well. Or publish your work > > somewhere others can use it. > > Yes. We value having a coherent system with decent UX and we have > to choose what we can support. Users are free to override those > choices in local repositories - and if they want advice on the best > way to do so, they're free to ask. > As evidenced by the ::libressl overlay where I am repeatedly copy/pasting changes from ::gentoo that have nothing to do with libressl this is not a very good solution. This is a huge amount of redundant and pointless effort that would be better suited being directly in the ::gentoo repo. What would be required so this is not required for eudev too? At the risk of repeating myself its working on my systems and I am willing to look at bugs and put in effort into keeping it functional. I don't think this is a matter of not having people willing to put effort in, but that no one wants to let them have the chance.
