Re: my thoughts on the Vancouver Prospectus
Matthew Garrett wrote:
This, uh, sounds very much like "We need to drop architectures, and so
we have come up with these criteria that will result in us dropping
architectures". Which is a reasonable standpoint to take, but which also
seems to imply that if 12 architectures manage to fulfil all the
criteria, we'll need to come up with some new criteria to ensure that
the number drops below 12 again.
If they can all satisfy the criteria, they're likely to be doing well
enough that there's not much *point* to dropping them -- the reason 11
architectures are hard to manage is because they're not all being
supported at an adequate level. The criteria listed try to give a good
idea of what "an adequate level" is likely to look like.
But basically if the attitude is "this is just a hobby, it's for the
computer in my basement, I don't really care about putting in that much
time" instead of at least "this is *so* cool, this is the best
architecture on the planet, everyone should use it, because it's going
to dominate the UNIVERSE, and I'm not going to sleep 'til it does!!1!"
then the architecture just isn't going to make a stable release. But
from what I've seen of the responses, though I understand Steve's
received some others in private mail, there isn't much in the way of the
second attitude going around.
If this is the case, I think that needs to be made clearer to avoid
situations where people work to meet the criteria but are vetoed by the
release team because there are already too many architectures.
The main issue is the port needs to be on top of problems quickly and
effectively; in many cases we won't know what those problems are 'til
they happen (and thus can't say "your port mustn't have such-n-such a
problem"), the criteria listed are meant to be reasonably objective ways
a port team can demonstrate that they're able to handle problems that arise.
If there are 11 teams that can promptly and effectively handle any issue
that comes up for their respective ports, then I suspect there wouldn't
be a major issue releasing them all -- that was pretty much how it
seemed for woody (particularly for the new architectures since potato),
but, and I'm not speaking authoritatively or for anyone else here, it
really doesn't seem that that's the way things are now.
Cheers,
aj
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