Core and Extras maintainers coordination

[Greg DeKoenigsberg]

On Fri, 22 Jul 2005, Ralf Corsepius wrote:

> > * Spell out the problem, as you see it;
> No possibility to provide updates and bug fixes, for 2 weeks.
> 
> > * Propose a solution, if you have one.
> Now, I'd propose to set Seth and Dan (and who else might be involved) a
> deadline (E.g. Monday morning). If they can bring the system up in
> reasonable fashion, fine, I'll be amongst the first to congratulate,
> then.
> 
> If not, I would propose to back up to the old "buildsystem" and to give
> them more time to bring up the new buildsystem without being
> unnecessarily pressured.

Well put and fair enough.  And to add Michael Schwendt's take:

"Keeping a backup build system (mind you, Seth had a working one) would
have been a very good idea. Particularly with regard to security fixes or
other important updates."

For a long time, we weren't getting any builds out the door at all, except 
by Seth's manual cranking.  And then we put an automated build system in 
place, and what do you know, it worked decently enough, and people came to 
rely upon it.

As far as the deadline proposal: I think we're probably in a position (and
Seth, correct me if I'm wrong) in which we're quite close, and reverting
to the old build system will be harder than finishing the new build
system.  So for now, we probably just need to push on as fast as we can,
and take our lumps in the process.  But the new build system will,
fortunately, be a vast improvement.

Lesson learned for the future: people have already come to rely upon the
build system, and we need to figure out how to treat it like the critical
piece of infrastructure that it is.

But it's still better than building every package by hand, which is where 
we were 3 months ago.  If that's too slow, sorry -- but that's the way it 
is.

--g

_____________________  ____________________________________________
  Greg DeKoenigsberg ] [ the future masters of technology will have
 Community Relations ] [ to be lighthearted and intelligent.  the
             Red Hat ] [ machine easily masters the grim and the 
                     ] [ dumb.  --mcluhan