Re: Hurd Advocacy?
On Mon, Aug 18, 2003 at 12:37:05AM +0200, Patrick Strasser wrote:
> How do maintainers react on patches for the Hurd? I there any direction
> noticalbe? Do poeple know about the Hurd and it's idiosyncrasies?
Most often they are accepted without hassle. Usually this is because the
Hurd is pretty POSIX compatible, and the bugs fix problems with the source
code to make it run on more POSIX systems.
Sometimes we have issues, because the Hurd makes some drastic decisions.
For example, we don't define a global PATH_MAX, and some maintainers believe
that this is ridiculous :) But for every maintainer like this there is also
a maintainer who is very happy to see the patch, or even does some
non-trivial amount of work to help us to get there.
> >- Is a lack of documentation the real hard thing for new developers to
> > overcome?
>
> In deed. And I like to read documentation in pdf. Others like it in info.
You can convert texinfo manuals into pdf, though.
> Regarding stability:
> I expect to see people hop on the train when the Hurd is more stable.
> Features are not the problem. But noone wants to use a system that has
> lots of features that work only 95% ot the time (Although most people
> do... ;-> )
I agree a lot. This is why I was working bugs and crashes for a very long
time before I even considered working on Hurd projects like translators or
design issues. I got a lot of bugs fixed, even if that required nagging
Roland more often than I could provide a fix myself.
More people who actually try things and learn how to use gdb to figure out
why it crashes are always helpful.
> Regarding Chicken & Egg:
> A lot has been said about the chicken-egg-problem. Nothing will happen
> while there are always the same number of chicken and eggs. Other things
> have to be done to increase the number of active developers and tester,
> this will not happen by itself. What about a "Hurd advocacy task force"
> that activley tries to attract new people?
Mmh. Some advocacy is good, but it can also be counterproductive. If the
advocacy makes promises that the active developers can not fulfill, people
will get a bad impression. So I would rather see advocacy done by people
who are also, at least in a minimal way, active, for example in helping with
installation problems, bug finding etc.
> Another thing that somtimes puzzles me: What is the role of RMS in the
> Hurd? I sometimes read posts about features or releases anounced by RMS,
> which noone on the lists has ever heard of. Lot's of people keep an eye
> of what RMS says.
RMS is our spiritual guide. He never wrote a line of code for the Hurd, but
he has given input on the design in many stages of the Hurd. The FSF has
employed people to work on the Hurd in the past, and I think it could happen
again. The post about the release was taken out of context and wildly
exaggerated. I think that RMS maybe was on the edge of giving up on the Hurd,
but we were able to demonstrate that the Hurd is somewhat working as a
prototype and is worth working on and supporting.
Thanks,
Marcus
--
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' GNU http://www.gnu.org marcus@gnu.org
Marcus Brinkmann The Hurd http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de/
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