Re: OSS-QM global patch repository

[Enrico Weigelt <weigelt at metux dot de>]

* Robert Schwebel <r.schwebel@pengutronix.de> wrote:

Hi,

> Generally a good idea; there are way too many projects out there 
> which produce real fixes and nobody ever has time to feed them 
> upstream (I've also Cc'd Rene Rebe who does a similar thing for T2).

That's why I want to bring things together. Virtually each distro
has it's own patches. Many, many sysops also do.

What we need is an central point for all folks and some QM mechs. 
Maybe we define policies describing requirements for an package
and which tests it has to run through. Once an package(-release) 
run through all the policy's tests, it gets the stanza. CSDB then
could record not just releases, but also the stanzas and patches. 

Most important policies (for us) would be:

* destdir installation (resspects either $DESTIR or $INSTALLDIR)
* alternate toolchain (respects $CC + friends properly)
* separate toolchains for host and target
* sysroot-capable
* deterministic build (no crazy guessing)

<snip>

> IMHO the main question is: who will finance that effort. 

For my site: partially my customers, partially my own idealism :)

One of my current customers works on embedded/small-devices. 
My job is to get minimal images with several OSS-packages built
on various small and exotic devices. I've made it clear from the
first point that I'm maintaining all my patches in this repository
and it's part of my work to do real fixes, not dirty hacks, and
try to get them into the upstream. They know how OSS works, so 
they're okay with that.

> We in the PTXdist team try hard to do our fixes in a way that 
> they are a) documented and b) upstream feedable, which means no 
> quick hacks but real fixes. Usually they end in the PTXdist patch 
> repository, because nobody has the time to feed them upstream, 
> do all the discussion with the maintainers etc while doing 
> day-by-day project work.

Yes, I know your repository is a good thing, already took lots
of patches there :)

Our current problem: we both have our repositories, each one for
our needs. We both don't have the time to do the ugly maintenance
works. (the goverment regularily burns billions for never working
IT projects, why can't they spend just a few positions for such
things ?! ;-o)

An way out: create an generic repository, which works well for 
much, much more people than just our two parties. We first have 
to spend some time in an good organisation and workflow, then 
many things can be done by bots or futher aquired helpers. 
(from time to time I've got an trainee who could come in here)

> So if there is some volunteer or any other possibility to raise 
> founding for a fulltime patch feeder, I'd very much welcome it 
> and support it as good as we can.

Well, fund raising is also a good point. Maybe we can try it 
together at least in .de - maybe an foundation or institute 
specialized on that. Well, this becomes quite OT, so we 
should talk about that off-list. (I could set up an new
list for it quickly, you can skype me as "nekrad666" - 
hoping my mic is okay ;-o)


cu
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 Enrico Weigelt    ==   metux IT service - http://www.metux.de/
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