quoted
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.
With all due respect: if that's what you wanted to direct our attention
to, you should have said so up front. I'm a bit over sensitzited to people
that wave the GPL argument in my face (being a Debian developer for m68k,
and seeing all the tribal infighting there). That's why I jumped all over
Gabe (your name sounds familiar from c.o.l.powerpc or this list, his
wasn't. Sorry for assuming this was just some moron posting flame bait.)
On the issue at hand: when I started working on PPC last year, I also
noticed that information about patches, kernels, people to talk and send
patches to was hard to find (I remember posting a complaint to that effect
to the NG). Having had some contact with Paul on m68k/PPC code sharing
issues before, I knew where to start asking at least, and sent a few
patches to Paul and BenH. Listening on this list for a while since gave me
a better overview on who's doing what, at least where kernel devlopment is
concerned.
I do see the problem that information is splintered over too many web
pages and FTP servers (I fail to see what this has to do with the GPL). I
would welcome having a central dsitribution independent site gather what's
out on the net, I'm too lazy to dig around for bits of information most of
the time myself. I fail to see how lack of response to your suggestions
(that I see voiced by you and Gabe for the first time now on this list)
constitutes lack of respect for you. I imagine keeping up with the project
at hand may leave little time for developers to think about procedures.
That doesn't mean nobody cares. It's not a high priority for some.
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.
The asinine argument was in reply to a post I perceived as asinine. I hope
you accept that as explanation, and let us move on. The resources I know
of are the FAQ-o-matic, mailing list and archive, c.o.l.powerpc (and
maybe deja archive), ftp.dev.linuxppc.org for all sorts of kernel and user
space updates, rsync servers for stable and development trees, and the
linuxppc.org web site that links to few of the above in no particularly
logical fashion.
I could imagine a reworked web site, plus CVS or other access to the
sources would be a good start. I agree with Tony Mantler on the importance
of CVS - having run the m68k Mac port almost as one-man-show for a year,
switching to CVS encouraged at least five more people to start working on
various parts. Getting the latest sources without waiting for me
to build a new diff, checking in patches directly and improved
communication were instrumental in advancing development.
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.
More power to you. I hope you can get some of your suggestions on
improving the communication and infrastructure and organizing the
PPC port adopted here. Please keep in mind that not all of us are
'professionals' though. I use LinuxPPC (on a Powerbook) for my daily work,
but I can work on the kernel source only in my spare time, as an amateur.
Michael
** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/
Michael Schmitz wrote:
[]
I could imagine a reworked web site, plus CVS or other access to the
sources would be a good start. I agree with Tony Mantler on the importance
of CVS - having run the m68k Mac port almost as one-man-show for a year,
switching to CVS encouraged at least five more people to start working on
various parts. Getting the latest sources without waiting for me
to build a new diff, checking in patches directly and improved
communication were instrumental in advancing development.
Speaking of CVS, I find it strange that nobody in this thread mentions
the vger CVS tree any more (but then I am finding many things strange
recently, "ppclinux".apple.com forgetting mklinux and so on, it's
probably me getting old). Until very recently, this tree maintained a
very up-to-date version of PPC patches. It seems that since yesterday,
PPC support on this tree is officially dead. There are comments like
RCS file: /cvs/linux/linux/include/asm-ppc/hw_irq.h,v
[]
revision 1.3
date: 2000/02/07 21:37:25; author: davem; state: Exp; lines: +1 -1
Not maintained here anymore.
Very sad. As a user, I found CVS much better than rsync, because it
gives much more information and has more intelligence in merging with
local changes. I only hope that bitkeeper will give similar
possibilities.
--
Martin
** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/
On Wed, 9 Feb 2000, Martin Costabel wrote:
Michael Schmitz wrote:
[]
quoted
I could imagine a reworked web site, plus CVS or other access to the
sources would be a good start. I agree with Tony Mantler on the importance
of CVS - having run the m68k Mac port almost as one-man-show for a year,
switching to CVS encouraged at least five more people to start working on
various parts. Getting the latest sources without waiting for me
to build a new diff, checking in patches directly and improved
communication were instrumental in advancing development.
Speaking of CVS, I find it strange that nobody in this thread mentions
the vger CVS tree any more (but then I am finding many things strange
recently, "ppclinux".apple.com forgetting mklinux and so on, it's
probably me getting old). Until very recently, this tree maintained a
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Say 3-4 months ago.
very up-to-date version of PPC patches. It seems that since yesterday,
PPC support on this tree is officially dead. There are comments like
RCS file: /cvs/linux/linux/include/asm-ppc/hw_irq.h,v
[]
revision 1.3
date: 2000/02/07 21:37:25; author: davem; state: Exp; lines: +1 -1
Not maintained here anymore.
Very sad. As a user, I found CVS much better than rsync, because it
gives much more information and has more intelligence in merging with
local changes. I only hope that bitkeeper will give similar
possibilities.
BK should be(come) better than CVS. I'm happy with BK now (sort of, still
getting used to it).
But I understand your frustration: I felt the same during the 2 months between
my vger-cvs and ppc-bk times. Let's hope ppc-bk is opened for the public
soon... IMHO bk is sufficient mature to have a positive netto gain for
Linux/PPC when combining a beta bk with the opening of the PPC kernel tree.
Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- Linux/{m68k~Amiga,PPC~CHRP} -- geert@linux-m68k.org
In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
-- Linus Torvalds
** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/
Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
On Wed, 9 Feb 2000, Martin Costabel wrote:
quoted
probably me getting old). Until very recently, this tree maintained a
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Say 3-4 months ago.
Well, I am running right now a 2.2.15-pre4 from vger, and I have a
working 2.3.42 built from vger with ajoshi's patches applied. Both are
less than 2 weeks old. I admit that here I don't really test the latest
ppc developments (say USB and Pbook), because my main goal right now is
to keep my old Pmac 6400 on board.
--
Martin
** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/
On Wed, 9 Feb 2000, Martin Costabel wrote:
Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
quoted
On Wed, 9 Feb 2000, Martin Costabel wrote:
quoted
quoted
probably me getting old). Until very recently, this tree maintained a
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Say 3-4 months ago.
Well, I am running right now a 2.2.15-pre4 from vger, and I have a
working 2.3.42 built from vger with ajoshi's patches applied. Both are
less than 2 weeks old. I admit that here I don't really test the latest
ppc developments (say USB and Pbook), because my main goal right now is
to keep my old Pmac 6400 on board.
That's because Cort sends his patches to Linus, and after that they
automagically appear in vger as well. But there was a time Linus' tree didn't
produce a compiling/working PPC kernel at all.
Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- Linux/{m68k~Amiga,PPC~CHRP} -- geert@linux-m68k.org
In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
-- Linus Torvalds
** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/
quoted
Speaking of CVS, I find it strange that nobody in this thread mentions
the vger CVS tree any more (but then I am finding many things strange
recently, "ppclinux".apple.com forgetting mklinux and so on, it's
probably me getting old). Until very recently, this tree maintained a
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Say 3-4 months ago.
At least 2 months from what I recall, but I admit I haven't used vger
since 2.3.18-vger horribly broke booting my Lombard and I couldn't figure
out how to get any console output before framebuffer console init.
quoted
very up-to-date version of PPC patches. It seems that since yesterday,
PPC support on this tree is officially dead. There are comments like
RCS file: /cvs/linux/linux/include/asm-ppc/hw_irq.h,v
[]
revision 1.3
date: 2000/02/07 21:37:25; author: davem; state: Exp; lines: +1 -1
Not maintained here anymore.
Very sad. As a user, I found CVS much better than rsync, because it
gives much more information and has more intelligence in merging with
local changes. I only hope that bitkeeper will give similar
possibilities.
Very sad indeed. Though rsync didn't destroy my local changes so far (huge
additions to adb.c, that was easy to merge. Reminds me to send those off
to Paul, argh).
BK should be(come) better than CVS. I'm happy with BK now (sort of, still
getting used to it).
And I just got used to CVS :-(( I'd need a BK primer when it gets
available.
Michael
** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/