Re: [Summary] Discourse for Debian
On 2020-04-15 13:45, Neil McGovern wrote:
> If there is sufficient pushback, I'll delete the instance, move on with
> my life, and conclude that no one in Debian can possibly try and
> innovate or do new things unless it is either:
> * 100% optional for people, or
> * made completely compatable with the old way of doing things
This reminds me of the time when I first started contributing to Debian,
10 years ago. I remember that we supported 6 version control systems,
and and I don't know how many different build systems.
Standardizing on one or two of each was out of the question back then,
because "Maintainers are volunteers, and as such, they get to choose how
they contribute their volunteer work".
It was sometimes daunting to contribute something to another package
back then. First, find the SCM. Oh great, it's CVS. Then, try to
understand the build system. Oh great, it's some niche thing nobody else
uses. OK, forget it, just file a bug report and let the Maintainer carry
the burden.
In the meantime, we now have Salsa and debhelper, and I challenge anyone
to claim that this was not a large improvement.
Today, I can be confident that for most packages, I can
* find them on Salsa
* use git-buildpackage to interact with Salsa
* understand the package build right way, thanks to dh
* contribute something back, possibly even as a merge request if it's
complex enough (eg: package update). Good luck doing that over the
BTS...
Fine, somebody had to give up on SVN or whatever to get on Salsa, but
that person is now possibly benefiting from a contribution that they
would have not received otherwise. That person is getting a proper
branch to look at, to comment on, and to merge. That's immensely better
than solving something over only the BTS, the "old way".
Individuality is still very strong within Debian, and rightly so. But
frequently, individuals forget that there are cases where the best
outcome for them is not the exact outcome they desire. Game theory, etc.
I don't mean to say that we should pursue every possible proposed
change. But not changing simply for only the reason of "we don't want to
change, we want the old way of doing things" is a fossilized mindset.
Our environment is an ever-changing one. We need to evolve and adapt to
that change, and we need to do that continuously.
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