Hi, On 07/31/2013 10:36 AM, Guido Berhoerster wrote:
* Robert Schweikert <rjschwei@suse.com> [2013-07-31 15:47]:
On 07/31/2013 09:21 AM, Guido Berhoerster wrote:
<snip>
This is what I think too. You only move problems and while you may (I don't even believe in that part to be honest) ease the work of the release team, you make it 100x harder for users to pick a stable base to work with. Because the dependencies are still there, but to test version 17 of X together with version 22 of GNOME together with version 8 of evolution you need to update to version 11 of Networkmanager and that then only works with the latest CORE, which then unfortunately is no longer available for X - and at that time you switch to gentoo and compile it all yourself (of course I forgot like 29 components).
Well, lets just say that problem can be addressed with definition of component boundaries that may not be immediately obvious today. As
You haven't laid out in any way along what lines you want to divide the packages that make up Factory into "components"
Purposefully, if I would have, we'd be discussing the contents of the components and implementation details, a discussion which at this point would IMHO not be very helpful.
Well, I would find it helpful because I don't see any feasible way to divide the packages into such components because they simply do not align into neatly separable components for reasons others have already pointed out.
OK, I'll bite, but consider that I have not sat down and pealed everything apart. However it is my firm believe that it is possible. The project model Stephan is testing/implementing is also a way of pealing things apart: http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2013-07/msg00003.html thus I'd say I am not the only one that believes we can untangle things ;) OK, now a "simple" example for illustration purposes. Lets say KDE and GNOME were each a component, but there exists an interdependency with NetworkManager. Thus NetworkManager would become it's own component and both GNOME and KDE and possibly other desktop environments would depend on the NetworkManager component. Some components will be large, others will be small, there is no hard and fast rule. The dependencies really drive the size of the components.
And it also makes a difference if we talk about components barely above individual package level or something that resembles the sizes of current development projects.
and how you want to deal with the interdependencies. Or how and by whom "components" should actually be managed, e.g. do you want to create dozens of "components" release teams?
Well the developers that work on any given component should manage their releases as it is not a whole lot of work. However, yes if someone is interested in contributing by being a release manager for a given component, why not?
What does a component consist of?
One or more packages.
Who are component developers?
The component development team is comprised of those developers that maintain packages that are part of a given component.
Today we have a variety of maintenance models, some packages are maintained by a group at the project level, some are manages by a single project maintainer with a few exceptions where packages have an in dividual maintainer, there a projects consisting of packages which have only individual maintainers etc., how are components supposed to be maintained?
A component team can be a single person, although this is as undesirable as it is today at the project or package level, see the maintainer model discussion from last year. A component team can comprise all or some of the package maintainers of the packages inside a component. Communication will be important but communication is important today as well.
It is completely unclear to me what you are actually proposing here.
Hopefully a bit better with the additional data. Later, Robert -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU SUSE-IBM Software Integration Center LINUX Tech Lead rjschwei@suse.com rschweik@ca.ibm.com 781-464-8147 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org