[maemo-developers] Repositories mess: conclusions and actions

[From: Graham Cobb]

On Thursday 08 November 2007 08:09:09 Tim Teulings wrote:
> Ed argumentation (I need a repository for testing and staging together
> with other people/projects) is valid and I acknowledge it. However his
> motivation is different. As such I doubt that the first 2 steps will get
> you more applications into extras, you just make it easier for people
> that already have extras applications and want to increase their pace.
> This is a valid reason.

I am not sure I agree.  I think the staging process will increase the number 
of applications going into extras.  I will certainly put GPE into it with the 
aim of moving it to extras.

I would REALLY like an autobuilder -- I have spent many, many hours building 
and maintaining for myself an environment which can build GPE for four 
different Maemo releases.  I can now use it for automatic nightly builds from 
the latest SVN and also for building releases which get tested and made 
available outside the project.  Some of those hours (and the ones to come in 
the future!) could have been spent on fixing bugs instead if there was an 
autobuilder.

> I must assume they we by far are not talking about the real problems,we
> have lost the audience because of the long discussion,  or that there
> are no real problems (form the view of the community) :-/ Scanning some
> #mameo logs I have seen that some people find a staging approach too
> complex. Me too, but how do we solve the quality problem instead?
> Perhaps it is time to make a poll :-)

I don't think that the silence of the Maemo community necessarily implies that 
the discussion has lost the community.  From other lists I see people waiting 
impatiently for this solution.  I would take the silence to be more that the 
points that need to be made have been made, very well, by the existing 
participants, that the advantages and disadvantages have been highlighted and 
that we don't have strong views on how these should be reconciled.  But 
almost anything would be an improvement on what we have today.

It is disappointing that no one with experience of creating, running (or even 
using) a production quality autobuilder has participated.  That suggest to me 
that we won't have that any time soon, unless Nokia feels like getting one of 
their Debian Developers involved.

Graham