On Mi, 06.08.08 19:25 Jouni Rinne <jouni.rinne@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Greetings all the proaudio developers!
The following is meant as a constructive criticism about the current
state of the proaudio overlay. I really am not trying to offend
anyone, and if I inadvertently manage to do so, I apologize sincerely.
Frankly, the proaudio overlay is a horrible mess, and unfortunately
has been like that for a long time. I haven't been able to use it as
such, as an overlay, for over an year. Frustratingly, I've been
forced to just checkout the svn occasionally and copy the interesting
pieces to my own overlay. There are two main reasons for that:
-- there are lots of duplicate ebuilds for no apparent reason in
proaudio tree (by 'duplicates' I mean 'same versions as in official
portage') -- conflicts with some ebuilds I've made myself.
I'm reluctant to say this, but it seems to me that the proaudio
developers like to live in their small world and doesn't pay
attention to what's happening in the main gentoo/portage world. The
proaudio overlay should be integrated with Gentoo much tighter.
<OT>Yay, welcome back Frieder!</OT>
Basically, we are two people, both Germans, both students, and in
Germany we have exams end of july. So yes, pro-audio is a small world,
"developer" whise. Hey, we are USERS too, and offer what we play around
with to the whide world.
And before picking things out and put fixed ones in your own overlay,
why not get an SVN account here and fix things there. Just freaking
HELP US.
Let's take flowcanvas (which Arve Barsnes just pointed out, very
good) as an example (yes I know, you fixed it already...):
According to the changelogs flowcanvas was originally introduced in
the main portage tree in 29th May 2008 (as x11-libs/flowcanvas, which
category describes its function much better than media-libs), and the
0.5.0 version in 9th July 2008. 0.5.0 version was added in proaudio
in 12 July, as media-libs/flowcanvas... How was this even possible?
Didn't any of the devs check anything before committing the ebuild? A
simple 'eix -s flowcanvas' would have shown something was wrong.
flowcanvas has been as media-libs/* in pro-audio since, let me check..
2006-05-11 18:12:00 +0200, version 9999
Sorry we failed to see that it got merged in portage as x11-libs two
years later. There has been no 0.5.0 in pro-audio until today. 0.4.0
was added in january.
I'm not sure why Frieder duplicated the in-portage one now. Frieder?
How often do you (proaudio developers) sync your systems? Once a year?
Speaking for myself.. weekly, or when interesing things hit the tree,
but not daily.
This is just an example, there are others like that, totally
unnecessary, wasted, duplicated efforts.
We are trying to kill duplicates, where ebuilds with added
useflags/features do not count as such, e.g. ardour.
Of course, there are occasionally perfectly legitimate excuses for
duplicate ebuilds, like providing vst or similar libraries & features
support for programs which doesn't have such support in the main
tree. But even these produce problems, most of the time an overlay
user isn't able to choose between proaudio and official ebuild.
paludis can do that easily. But that's something different.
You are right, duplicates have to get out here.
Well, to summarize, there are two things which should be done to
proaudio overlay ASAP, to make it usable:
1) Clean out *all* outdated & unnecessary duplicate ebuilds.
2) In case of the necessary duplicate ebuilds, fix the package
version & revision numbers so people could choose whether to use the
official gentoo version or the proaudio version.
I fail the to see your question on how and when we should setup you up
with an SVN account, and to add some points:
3) if we fix things, write bug reports on b.g.o. to get it fixed in-tree
4) if we add new things -> b.g.o. and get it into the tree
5) finally manage to get that freaking gentoo-dev quizz done and join
the official Gentoo pro-audio herd (/me waves to Alexis :)) and then
use this overlay only for experimental stuff that does not (yet) fit in
the QA level of portage.
That would be the best.
Yours
Jouni Rinne
Cheers,
Tom