Question to the candidates: inclusion of the kFreeBSD-* po..

Julien BLACHE · External Since: Nov 14, 2004 Posts: 541

Hi DPL candidates,

The kFreeBSD ports are now in a good enough shape to be included in
unstable. Aurélien Jarno got ftpmaster's approval for that during an
informal conversation at debconf5 [1] but so far, there's been no
progress on this front.

Since then, the SCC split happened and ftp-master moved to ries, so
adding more architectures to the archive is no longer a problem, AIUI.

Hence, what is your position on including those new, non-Linux ports ?
What would the timeframe be like, according to you ?

If an ftpmaster was to charge an amount of money to include the new
architectures (as was the case for amd64), what would, according to
you, be a reasonable amount ?

Thanks,

JB.

[1] <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/glibc-bsd-devel/2005-July/000453.html>

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Sune Vuorela · External Since: Jun 05, 2005 Posts: 55

On 2007-02-27, Julien BLACHE <jblache DeleteThis @debian.org> wrote:
> If an ftpmaster was to charge an amount of money to include the new
> architectures (as was the case for amd64), what would, according to

Huh? what has been the case for amd64? please enlighten me.

/Sune

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Raphael Hertzog · External Since: May 28, 2005 Posts: 461

Hi Julien,

On Tue, 27 Feb 2007, Julien BLACHE wrote:
> Since then, the SCC split happened and ftp-master moved to ries, so
> adding more architectures to the archive is no longer a problem, AIUI.
>
> Hence, what is your position on including those new, non-Linux ports ?

I have no problem with them and I welcome them.

> What would the timeframe be like, according to you ?

I have no idea of the reasons explaining the delays. But it would seem
logical to do that soon in the lenny cycle (a few weeks after etch
released).

If some other problems are to be resolved, then we should ask the
ftpmasters what they are. Anthony's answer to this question might
bring us some more light on this topic.

> If an ftpmaster was to charge an amount of money to include the new
> architectures (as was the case for amd64), what would, according to
> you, be a reasonable amount ?

An ftpmaster must not require money to integrate a new architecture.

I know Anthony got paid for AMD64 but AFAIK it's mainly because the SCC
split was blocking the inclusion of AMD64. Since people got fedup, a
company helped resolve the problem by giving time to Anthony to actually
make it happen sooner (even though we were already quite late).

It's in the spirit of his "AJ Market" experiment:
http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/blog/2005/11/16

I would worry much more if ftpmasters refused patches implementing
their projects when at the same time they are seeking funding. It's
unlikely to ever happen IMO.

Cheers,
--
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Julien BLACHE · External Since: Nov 14, 2004 Posts: 541

Wouter Verhelst <wouter.RemoveThis@debian.org> wrote:

> Giving a reasonable time estimate would require me to know a *slight*
> bit more about the FreeBSD ports than I do at this point in time; so I
> won't try it.

Ah, I expected the candidates to take the 5 minutes it takes to get up
to speed wrt the kFreeBSD ports by reading the appropriate status
pages.

You just lost my vote.

JB.

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Wouter Verhelst · External Since: Nov 08, 2004 Posts: 599

On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 05:17:01PM +0100, Julien BLACHE wrote:
> Hi DPL candidates,
>
> The kFreeBSD ports are now in a good enough shape to be included in
> unstable. Aurélien Jarno got ftpmaster's approval for that during an
> informal conversation at debconf5 [1] but so far, there's been no
> progress on this front.
>
> Since then, the SCC split happened and ftp-master moved to ries, so
> adding more architectures to the archive is no longer a problem, AIUI.
>
> Hence, what is your position on including those new, non-Linux ports ?
> What would the timeframe be like, according to you ?

Giving a reasonable time estimate would require me to know a *slight*
bit more about the FreeBSD ports than I do at this point in time; so I
won't try it.

It seems prudent, however, to have a look at this together with everyone
involved: the porters, the ftpmasters, and the release team. If they
manage to come up with a plan, we should implement it. I think the role
of the DPL in that picture does not have to be much more than getting
the different parties talking, if even that.

> If an ftpmaster was to charge an amount of money to include the new
> architectures (as was the case for amd64), what would, according to
> you, be a reasonable amount ?

That's up to the ftpmaster and the person paying. The alternative is to
wait until one of the ftpmasters has time to do the necessary work,
which may well take too long.

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Mohammed Adnène · External Since: Nov 12, 2004 Posts: 18

On Tue, Feb 27, 2007, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> I would worry much more if ftpmasters refused patches implementing
> their projects when at the same time they are seeking funding. It's
> unlikely to ever happen IMO.

What do you think about them just "refusing patches" or ignoring them
(not commenting on how the patch should be improved to get included)?

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Raphael Hertzog · External Since: May 28, 2005 Posts: 461

On Tue, 27 Feb 2007, Mohammed Adnène Trojette wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 27, 2007, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > I would worry much more if ftpmasters refused patches implementing
> > their projects when at the same time they are seeking funding. It's
> > unlikely to ever happen IMO.
>
> What do you think about them just "refusing patches" or ignoring them
> (not commenting on how the patch should be improved to get included)?

That's obviously part of the generic "communication" problem. I treat that
in my platform.

Cheers,
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Wouter Verhelst · External Since: Nov 08, 2004 Posts: 599

On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 06:20:14PM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 05:17:01PM +0100, Julien BLACHE wrote:
> > If an ftpmaster was to charge an amount of money to include the new
> > architectures (as was the case for amd64), what would, according to
> > you, be a reasonable amount ?
>
> That's up to the ftpmaster and the person paying. The alternative is to
> wait until one of the ftpmasters has time to do the necessary work,
> which may well take too long.

I was told on IRC that this statement seems to "support ftpmasters
soliciting bribes". That's not what it intended to say, so let me
clarify.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a third party
(either a person or a company) paying a Debian Developer to do some work
on a given task; doing so would allow that Developer to prioritize that
particular task above other things which would otherwise get in the way,
and if that person or company has a business that could make a lot more
money if the task in question got done sooner rather than later, that
would quite clearly help them.

The amount of money required for the ftpmaster to indeed prioritize the
task in question above other things (like "paid work") is up to
negotiation between the Debian Developer and the third party.

A Debian Developer should not, however, refuse to do a given task unless
he or she is paid, and should also not stand in the way of other
developers stepping up to do that task in their place.

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Wouter Verhelst · External Since: Nov 08, 2004 Posts: 599

On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 06:25:31PM +0100, Julien BLACHE wrote:
> Wouter Verhelst <wouter.TakeThisOut@debian.org> wrote:
>
> > Giving a reasonable time estimate would require me to know a *slight*
> > bit more about the FreeBSD ports than I do at this point in time; so I
> > won't try it.
>
> Ah, I expected the candidates to take the 5 minutes it takes to get up
> to speed wrt the kFreeBSD ports by reading the appropriate status
> pages.

I can't be expected to know everything about Debian; in this particular
case, I didn't even know there *were* such status pages. If you could
give me a link, I wouldn't mind reading it and perhaps following up with
a better response.

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Julien BLACHE · External Since: Nov 14, 2004 Posts: 541

Wouter Verhelst <wouter.TakeThisOut@debian.org> wrote:

>> Ah, I expected the candidates to take the 5 minutes it takes to get up
>> to speed wrt the kFreeBSD ports by reading the appropriate status
>> pages.
>
> I can't be expected to know everything about Debian; in this particular
> case, I didn't even know there *were* such status pages. If you could
> give me a link, I wouldn't mind reading it and perhaps following up with
> a better response.

>From my recollection, there even was such a page written for m68k at
the time. As an m68k porter, I just thought you knew a couple of
things about the whole archive qualification process and the
associated wiki pages.

I even find your name on
<http://wiki.debian.org/ArchiveQualification/m68k>

My point is, you did not have to reply today, so you could have taken
the time to google for it or to ask around on IRC to get /some/
information about the whole thing.

If you're not doing that when answering questions during the campaign,
how can I assume that you'll actually do when you'll be DPL ?

JB.

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Jeroen van Wolffelaar · External Since: Nov 23, 2004 Posts: 187

On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 06:51:24PM +0100, Julien BLACHE wrote:
> If you're not doing that when answering questions during the campaign,
> how can I assume that you'll actually do when you'll be DPL ?

The amount of questions asked during a typical DPL campaign period is
nearly insane.

I'd rather have a DPL that can prioritize and spend his time on what
would benefit the project the most than one that'd try to do everything
at the same time as good as it gets -- and running the risk of in the
end not achieving much at all.

--Jeroen

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Daniel Jacobowitz · External Since: Dec 02, 2004 Posts: 266

On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 07:05:02PM +0100, Jeroen van Wolffelaar wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 06:51:24PM +0100, Julien BLACHE wrote:
> > If you're not doing that when answering questions during the campaign,
> > how can I assume that you'll actually do when you'll be DPL ?
>
> The amount of questions asked during a typical DPL campaign period is
> nearly insane.
>
> I'd rather have a DPL that can prioritize and spend his time on what
> would benefit the project the most than one that'd try to do everything
> at the same time as good as it gets -- and running the risk of in the
> end not achieving much at all.

Totally agreed. Also, I think it was both courteous and wise to try
to respond promptly; if you let a question sit, in my experience, it
becomes harder to answer.

--
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CodeSourcery

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Frank Küster · External Since: Dec 08, 2005 Posts: 263

Daniel Jacobowitz <dan DeleteThis @debian.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 07:05:02PM +0100, Jeroen van Wolffelaar wrote:
>> On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 06:51:24PM +0100, Julien BLACHE wrote:
>> > If you're not doing that when answering questions during the campaign,
>> > how can I assume that you'll actually do when you'll be DPL ?
>>
>> The amount of questions asked during a typical DPL campaign period is
>> nearly insane.
>>
>> I'd rather have a DPL that can prioritize and spend his time on what
>> would benefit the project the most than one that'd try to do everything
>> at the same time as good as it gets -- and running the risk of in the
>> end not achieving much at all.
>
> Totally agreed. Also, I think it was both courteous and wise to try
> to respond promptly; if you let a question sit, in my experience, it
> becomes harder to answer.

In particular if one wants to answer the rest of the mail at once.
People start wondering "why is he avoiding that part?".

Regards, Frank
--
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Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)

Wouter Verhelst · External Since: Nov 08, 2004 Posts: 599

On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 06:51:24PM +0100, Julien BLACHE wrote:
> Wouter Verhelst <wouter RemoveThis @debian.org> wrote:
> >> Ah, I expected the candidates to take the 5 minutes it takes to get up
> >> to speed wrt the kFreeBSD ports by reading the appropriate status
> >> pages.
> >
> > I can't be expected to know everything about Debian; in this particular
> > case, I didn't even know there *were* such status pages. If you could
> > give me a link, I wouldn't mind reading it and perhaps following up with
> > a better response.
>
> From my recollection, there even was such a page written for m68k at
> the time. As an m68k porter, I just thought you knew a couple of
> things about the whole archive qualification process and the
> associated wiki pages.
>
> I even find your name on
> <http://wiki.debian.org/ArchiveQualification/m68k>

*That* is what you're talking about. Okay.

Still, the second paragraph in my initial response (which you happily
snipped away) explains what I think should be done about this: the DPL
should not be telling people what to do; rather, the people involved
(porters, release managers, and ftpmasters) should discuss together what
the current state is; they should outline the work required to get from
the current state of affairs to the desired state; and *they*, not the
DPL, should come up with a plan to fix this.

If you're asking *me* for an estimate, then I'd say a few months after
the release of etch does not sound unreasonable. But it's not my call to
make.

> My point is, you did not have to reply today, so you could have taken
> the time to google for it or to ask around on IRC to get /some/
> information about the whole thing.

True.

On the other hand, in all fairness you'll have to agree that you did not
exactly give a lot of information or context either. Sure, I can look
that up myself, but if I need to spend ten minutes for just *finding*
context information (let alone *reading* it) for every question on this
mailinglist, then I'll never be able to answer all of them. I had to
google around and ask around for your statement that "ftpmasters were
charging an amount of money to include amd64", too. Not everyone
remembers these things, especially not if they don't consider them to be
a big deal, as was the case for me. If you would have just added a link
to the relevant pages and/or Message-ID's, I could much easier have
answered your question.

Anyway, EOT for me now -- I wasted way too much time on this thread
already.

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Julien BLACHE · External Since: Nov 14, 2004 Posts: 541

Frank Küster <frank RemoveThis @debian.org> wrote:

>> Totally agreed. Also, I think it was both courteous and wise to try
>> to respond promptly; if you let a question sit, in my experience, it
>> becomes harder to answer.
>
> In particular if one wants to answer the rest of the mail at once.
> People start wondering "why is he avoiding that part?".

In such cases, something along the line of "I need some more time to
answer this particular point, let me get back to you on that ASAP"
comes to mind.

JB.

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Aurelien Jarno · External Since: Nov 08, 2004 Posts: 494

Julien BLACHE a écrit :
> Hi DPL candidates,
>
> The kFreeBSD ports are now in a good enough shape to be included in
> unstable. Aurélien Jarno got ftpmaster's approval for that during an
> informal conversation at debconf5 [1] but so far, there's been no
> progress on this front.
>
> Since then, the SCC split happened and ftp-master moved to ries, so
> adding more architectures to the archive is no longer a problem, AIUI.

Note that we have also been asked to filled a page on the wiki, and this
has been done [1].

Cheers,
Aurelien

[1] http://wiki.debian.org/ArchiveQualification/kfreebsd-i386

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Gustavo Franco · External Since: May 09, 2006 Posts: 117

On 2/27/07, Julien BLACHE <jblache.RemoveThis@debian.org> wrote:
> Hi DPL candidates,
>
> The kFreeBSD ports are now in a good enough shape to be included in
> unstable. Aurélien Jarno got ftpmaster's approval for that during an
> informal conversation at debconf5 [1] but so far, there's been no
> progress on this front.
>
> Since then, the SCC split happened and ftp-master moved to ries, so
> adding more architectures to the archive is no longer a problem, AIUI.
>
> Hence, what is your position on including those new, non-Linux ports ?
> What would the timeframe be like, according to you ?
> (...)

Hi Julien,

I care a lot about the kfreebsd-* ports, i've been around #debian-bsd
since the OpenBSD port was still being worked on, but due to time
constraints i wasn't too helpful since then. With that in mind, i
wrote the answer for your question almost a month ago in the second
paragraph of my platform that you will be able to read soon. In a few
words: After elected, i'll do my best to push kfreebsd-* to be
officially released together with Lenny.

I think with the milestone above in mind, and also considering a goal
based release schedule (more on the subject on my platform), we will
have enough time to add the arches to the archive and work on the
pending bugs.

regards,
-- stratus
http://stratusandtheswirl.blogspot.com

Frank Küster · External Since: Dec 08, 2005 Posts: 263

Anthony Towns <aj.DeleteThis@azure.humbug.org.au> wrote:

> Personally, due to things like [0], I tend to think having different
> sources for different OSes is likely to make sense; which isn't something
> we can manage with the main archive as it stands.
>
> Cheers,
> aj
>
> [0] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/06/msg00012.html

I'm puzzled. The mail you cite explains a really simple way to make a
source buildable with SElinux on linux, and without on other OSes.

How can you take that as an argument for separating the archives?

Regards, Frank
--
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Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)

Julien BLACHE · External Since: Nov 14, 2004 Posts: 541

Anthony Towns <aj.DeleteThis@azure.humbug.org.au> wrote:

> Personally, due to things like [0], I tend to think having different
> sources for different OSes is likely to make sense; which isn't something
> we can manage with the main archive as it stands.

I disagree here.

Building for different OSes from the same source will improve
portability and quality.

We have a long history of helping make free software more portable
accross architectures, let's just take it to the next step.

As for the number of developers, there are a couple more than is told
on the qualification page, although obviously not all of them are DDs
(but that can be fixed).

I think we'll attract even more people once kFreeBSD will be an
official port. Also, consider that kFreeBSD enthusiasts will probably
join some of the biggest maintenance teams to help out with kFreeBSD
issues, which will also benefit to the current Linux ports.

And I truly hope Sun will re-license OpenSolaris under the GPL so we
can have an official OpenSolaris port too.

JB.

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Aigars Mahinovs · External Since: Apr 21, 2005 Posts: 19

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

> The kFreeBSD ports are now in a good enough shape to be included in
> unstable. Aurélien Jarno got ftpmaster's approval for that during an
> informal conversation at debconf5 [1] but so far, there's been no
> progress on this front.
>
> Since then, the SCC split happened and ftp-master moved to ries, so
> adding more architectures to the archive is no longer a problem, AIUI.
>
> Hence, what is your position on including those new, non-Linux ports ?
> What would the timeframe be like, according to you ?

As I am not aware of any technical issues blocking such inclusion, I
would assume that it would be appropriate to include it soon after the
next release.

- --
Best regards,
Aigars Mahinovs mailto:aigarius@debian.org
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| .''`. Debian GNU/Linux LAKA |
| : :' : http://www.debian.org & http://www.laka.lv |
| `. `' |
| `- |
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