Re: I suggest creation of a list of package maintainers

[Christopher Faylor <cgf at redhat dot com>]

On Sat, Aug 25, 2001 at 09:36:08PM -0700, Augustus Saunders wrote:
>>I have thought about posting the list of maintainers externally but
>>I've always rejected this idea since I know that the result would be
>>more clueless people contacting maintainers directly rather than
>>sending email to cygwin@cygwin.com with their concerns.
>
>I understand the concern here, and I concur that publishing the
>maintainers themselves is not so useful.  However, I think a couple of
>things would be very useful:
>
>1) A one or two sentance status update on packages that are *not*
>current.  For example, after searching the mail archives, I've found a
>few people talking about building GCC 3 series, and apparently it works
>(or is very close).  But nowhere have I found any mention of why the
>standard distro doesn't use it yet.

It isn't updated because I haven't felt like upgrading it, basically.
It always pays to let things settle down before moving to a major update
like gcc 3.0.  Otherwise we'd have people reporting the same bugs in the
cygwin and gcc mailing lists.

I suspect that other people who haven't gotten their packages up to date
(if there are any) probably are not doing so because they don't have the
time.  Asking them to take the time to maintain a web page doesn't make
much sense.

People get to these things when they can.  If it is really important to
you, then you can build things yourself.  If you can't build things
yourself, then, well...

>Since it's a major upgrade to a major (might I suggest cornerstone?)
>package that's been out for a few months, I would expect that Cygwin
>users (both new and veteran) would appreciate knowing what's up.

gcc 3.0 was released on June 18.  3.0.1 was released last week.

>2) A list of packages that are *not* part of the standard install that
>are known to build ootb with the latest Cygwin.  Also, a list of high
>profile packages (how you determine this, I'm not sure) that still need
>maintainers.  For example, Ruby built ootb, but GNU Smalltack did not.

This has been a standard part of the web page for years.  Michael Hirmke
maintains a page just like this and it is linked to from the cygwin web
page.  It is a little out-of-date now, which is the problem with these
kind of endeavors.

People can also just send news with software build successes.  That's
also possible at the cygwin web page.

>To summarize, I think that collating our collective build experiences
>would be useful and would save people a lot of time.  I think people
>considering whether to use Cygwin would appreciate, "Oh look,
><myfavoritepackage> will work ootb! I think I'll give this Cygwin thing
>a try!" :) I'm not recommending that anybody take a lot of time to put
>this page together.  Just put up a few forms for an automated page
>where we can just submit what packages worked or didn't for us.  Give
>it a link off the "Software" page, mention it here a couple times, and
>watch as we build a community resource :)

People have indicated interest in maintaining something like this a few
times in the past.  If you want to donate said forms, I'll happily
consider them, as always.

I basically have gotten very dubious about the possibility of providing
people with information that they're actually going to read.  I suspect
that if we had a detailed package status page, mailing list traffic
would stay the same and we'd be saying "Have you checked the package
status page"?  So, I'm not personally willing to maintain this.

If other people think it is a good idea, I'll accept forms and offer
access to the cygwin web site, again, as always.

cgf

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