[CentOS] Getting ready for CentOS 5.4

[Ray Van Dolson]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 03:10:46PM +0200, Neil Thompson wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 07:46:49AM -0400, mbneto wrote:
> > 
> >    So, if this is really the case I'd suggest making some sort of campaign to
> >    raise money and provide the necessary resources in order to speed things
> >    up.� If RH maintains the 4-6 month schedule it can happen again in less
> >    than three months.
> > 
> >    If this is not the case as a suggestion please let the community know
> >    what's going on.� Perhaps an automated email sent to the mailing list with
> >    today's status (like 400 packages left to rebase, 20 packages being
> >    reviewed by QA etc) would give a sense of progress, let the others know if
> >    you hit problems and reduce the anxiety with daily doses of news :)
> > 
> 
> (Obdiscaimer: I am not a CentOS developer)
> 
> You know, it really amuses me that there are all these "drive-by" offers of
> "help" with every new release of CentOS.  If I were one of the developers,
> I'd be getting a little annoyed right now.
> 
> If you really want to assist, why don't you invest the time and effort BEFORE
> a release is near, helping out with all the standard stuff so that you can
> gain the trust of the team, and become a real, long term, contributor.
> 

FWIW, the OP was bringing his suggestions up for the 5.4 release (which
is a ways off yet).  I'm just going to assume he had the best of
intentions.

There maybe needs to be a community leizon of some sort to help
leverage these types of offers for help.  Many of us are willing to
help, but certainly don't have the necessary time cycles to do so as
effectively as some of the rest of the core team.  If there was a way
to make jumping in and helping out with a few mundane tasks or throwing
spare CPU cycles at tasks I think a lot of the "weekend warriors" could
be more effectively leveraged.

>From a brief glance at the "Contribute" page[1], there isn't a lot of
info on the build process, bottlenecks, or how people can help out with
it although there is good information on other areas.

Maybe adding something to that page would be a good start and a way to
stem off these random "how can I help?" posts to the mailing list?

Just some thoughts.  We are all tremendously appreciate of the people
who do the heavy lifting for CentOS.

Ray

[1] http://wiki.centos.org/Contribute