On Sun, 20 Feb 2011, Johnny Hughes wrote:
On 02/20/2011 07:21 PM, Steve Meyers wrote:
On 2/20/11 12:03 PM, Fabian Arrotin wrote:
I know i've already said that in that thread (but a lot of people have 'echoed' their own answers too, right ?:-) ) but i've had personally the case where people were asking to 'help the project' and when they were pointed to either improving the website, translate the wiki, chasing after potential banding issues, etc, etc .. the only answer i've got*multiple* times was "no, i'm not interested in doing that : i just want to rebuild packages" .. so each time it proved me that such people aren't interested in helping the project as a whole, but instead just want to focus on build issues. I'm really wondering (and still*my* opinion) if those people are interested in CentOS as a project, or just want to 'suck' some build scripts (which are just wrappers around mock/plague as stated so much times in that thread) to produce their own respins.
Does rebuilding packages not count as helping the project? If the release speed is seen as the biggest problem with the project, why do you assume ulterior motives for people who want to help out with the effort?
For goodness sake, it's an open source project. Who cares if the occasional person wants to produce their own respin.
External rebuilds of packages could never be used by this project, or any other project.
Johnny,
For heaven's sake. The fact that users can rebuild has many applications even if the RPMs will never be part of CentOS (for obvious reasons).
* You create a community of people that can help troubleshoot problems and report problems upstream (less effort for the CentOS developers !) Farkas Levente single-handedly reported most RHEL6 rebuild problems to Red Hat.
* This community of people has a higher standard than the current community. Which has been the reason for _not accepting_ more people in various positions (they first have to prove themselves, right ? Prove themselves doing what exactly ?)
* Thanks to more people understanding what is involved, the automation part (tools, scripts, ...) can improve as well. You mention that SRPMs are not being changed, but the environment for each build may be adapted. Looks to me a good tool describing this for those packages is useful. (If only to share that information between our advanced users)
* The more people involved, the more people you can choose from once crucial members of the team get married, have children, drop dead, or anything else in life that takes away free time put into the CentOS project. It's a clear win-win for the project.
You mentioned the Fedora project as the most open project you know. Why not learn from how they work ? Obviously packages build by a single Fedora user are not going into Fedora either, but at least nothing in the process is concealed to users, so users can advance and the project improves as well.