[maemo-developers] Diablo extras repository proposal

[From: Glen Ditchfield]

Ed Bartosh wrote:
> My opinion that tt's about 2 men days work to fix all build failures.
> Niels can tell how many people uploaded packages to extras. And you can
> see how many of them actually care to fix build failures. If each of
> them would spend 1(one) hour during last week we would already have
> almost all packages fixed.

I think you should consider that you and Niels are more knowledgeable, more
focused, and therefore more productive than I am.  I'm a guy with a life, a
family, and a house and yard that need more attention than I can give them
during the tragically short summer. My recreational programming time is
limited -- a solid hour of work is a pretty good evening, and I don't get
every evening.  And Maemo is not my only interest.  When I come back to a
project, it takes me a while just to remember where I left off.

I was delighted when the Autobuilder was announced, and looked forward to
using it.  It just happened that I didn't have any work in progress on
Battle for Westnoth that I could submit.  Also, I planned to get the next
release working in a scratchbox before sending it to the autobuilder,
because I didn't want to struggle with the code and a new build system at
the same time.

The very day I sat down to work on Wesnoth, the Extras Assistant was
announced.  Again, I was delighted, and went to the rebuild log page to see
how my packages were building.  They weren't!  fribidi_0.10.7-4osso1 was
missing.  That was my fault; I hadn't realized that, because the package
version wasn't 0 or 1, the source tarball wasn't included in my upload to
Extras.  So I fixed that, and finding and fixing the mistake (and adding a
tip to the Extras Repository web page) only used up two evenings...

But what about libfont-ttf-perl_0.43-1?  The build is failing because an
include statement in debian/rules can't find a file that the quilt package
should install.  Is something wrong with the Build-depends in my control
file?  libfont-ttf-perl builds in my scratchbox, and it builds if I upload
it directly to the autobuilder.  Is something wrong with the Extras
Assistant?  After a few more evenings of investigation, I requested a
rebuild (which hasn't happened yet) in the faint hope that something had
temporarily gone wrong with the Extras Assistant.  I also asked for help in
this mailing list on Monday, and haven't seen a reply yet.  And then I
spent a whole evening on Wesnoth!

Now when I look at the Rebuild Log page, I see that I should be able to
promote the package that the Autobuilder built.  When I follow the link, I
am told that I am not authorized to use the system.  Next, I will look
through the archives and the web sites to find out how to get
authorization.  That, and composing this letter, will likely use up the
evening.

So you see, other than an evening of Wesnoth work and three hours of
Half-Life mayhem, the Extras Assistant and the autobuilder have consumed
all of my recreational computer time since the Assistant was announced.

Judging from the tone of some recent postings from nokia.com addresses, you
are disappointed and maybe even a bit hurt that the autobuilder hasn't been
flooded with users.  I sympathize -- I'm not here for the money either! --
and I do appreciate the work that's been done.  But you have to remember
that I'm an *amateur*, in both senses of the word, and so are most of the
people on this mailing list.  We simply *cannot* respond quickly to your
needs.