the state of the linuxppc-dev community

So what exactly is the problem? The 2.2.12 source? The .config? The fact
that LinuxPPC developers appear to break the GPL by not dropping a fresh
source tarball along each kernel binary?

	I happen to know the problem shared by Gabe, me, and anyone else primarily
concerned with the stability, robustness, and ease of use of the whole LinuxPPC
distribution and community authority.
	The problem is that LinuxPPC.org has a development environment that is
splintered, unstable, undocumented, obscure, nonintuitive, and basically
impenetrable even to people who are fully dedicated to it such as Gabe and
myself.  It is run almost exclusively on tribal knowledge that is only in the
heads of the people who are writing the ppc-specific core of the OS.  There are
no procedures and no interface.  And there is very little respect toward people
like me and Gabe who have the time, dedication, and skills to clean it all up.
	First, obviously, we have to map out how everything currently is, before we
could even suggest anything better.  But because 90% of the responses we get
are either dead silence or asinine arguments like yours, we are slowly getting
nowhere.  The remaining 10% are the responses of a mob cheering us on just for
having pointed out the silly state of the maintenance of LinuxPPC.
	We have definately produced deeds rather than just words.  Gabe is a primary
maintainer of Stampede Linux (www.stampede.org), and is working on porting
Stampede to PPC; and I've accepted jhaas's request to be the primary maintainer
of LinuxPPC security and of LinuxPPC Powerbook support.  We both use LinuxPPC
on Powerbook for 99% of our daily work.
	We are capable of contributing to organizing the random mess that is the
LinuxPPC dev community, and tremendously boosting the quality of the product by
making the community accessible to a lot more people.  There are dozens more
likeminded individuals in the linuxppc-user community, who just haven't yet
addressed the root of the issue -- the developers and the distribution
maintainers who are simply incredibly brilliant but disorganized.  I get
private emails from end users, cheering on anyone who makes an organizing move.
	BUT until I hear from the Head Honchos -- jcarr, jhaas, and at least some of
linuxppc's main kickass developers -- I'm not going to fork from linuxppc.org
just to have an organized environment.  We're professionals.  This is an
extremely high quality product who deserves better documentation than random
bulk mailing list searches, and better distribution than a hundred random files
in random ftp sites all over the world.

=====
"Don't expect your own messiah; this neverworld which you desire is
only in your mind." -- http://www.dreamtheater.net/songb4.htm#IV5

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

At 5:37 PM -0600 2/8/2000, Dan Bethe wrote:
[...]

The problem is that LinuxPPC.org has a development environment that is
splintered, unstable, undocumented, obscure, nonintuitive, and basically
impenetrable even to people who are fully dedicated to it such as Gabe and
myself.  It is run almost exclusively on tribal knowledge that is only in the
heads of the people who are writing the ppc-specific core of the OS.
There are
no procedures and no interface.  And there is very little respect toward
people
like me and Gabe who have the time, dedication, and skills to clean it all up.

[...]

I've noticed that it can be a bit of a task trying to keep up with what's
happening in the PPC-Linux kernel. I found myself in a somewhat similar
position a year or so ago on the Mac68k-Linux project.

That problem was solved when we (Mac68k) moved the development to a CVS server.

Mind you, the PPC-Linux rsync server makes it very easy to get the
latest-ish kernel sources, which I used quite successfully recently to
compile a kernel for my friend's PBG3. (well, mostly successful. got some
missing symbols from some unimportant modules that I didn't care to track
down. used the benh sources)

However, I find that CVS makes it a lot easier to keep track of what's
going on, especially with a CVS mailing list, which reports all updates to
the repository.


All in all I'm not really complaining, though it would be nice if there was
a centralized place where all the updates relating to the (various) PPC
kernel tree(s) were logged.

That's my 2c.


Cheers - Tony :)


--
Tony Mantler         Renaissance Nerd Extraordinaire         eek@escape.ca
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada                       http://www.escape.ca/~eek


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

On Tue, 8 Feb 2000, Tony Mantler wrote:

Mind you, the PPC-Linux rsync server makes it very easy to get the
latest-ish kernel sources, which I used quite successfully recently to
compile a kernel for my friend's PBG3. (well, mostly successful. got some
missing symbols from some unimportant modules that I didn't care to track
down. used the benh sources)

Except that the server is never current, yes.  The _only_ place right now
with any sort of current sources is in bitkeeper trees.  So once bk is
released, things should look a bit better.

---
Tom Rini (TR1265)
http://gate.crashing.org/~trini/


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/