On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 06:16:25PM -0500, James Gibbs wrote:On Jan 7, 2004, at 5:34 PM, Kevin Horton wrote: > >I think the average user would hope for a continual stream of new >packages, which means you need people to keep feeding the package >tracker with new submissions. However, there doesn't seem to be very >many resources available to keep the package tracker moving. It can >take so long to get a response to a submission that I suspect many >submitters would get frustrated and decide that he was wasting his >time trying to help out.
I agree. It is hard to get people to do this continuously, but several people do it. benh57 did quite a lot at one point (and is still doing a lot), then chris01 and dmacks started doing a lot. But they have their own packages (and lives) and sometimes get too busy to do it.
*blush*
I concur with what you said (having been a frustrated submitter for a while, and now a CVS committing person).
Okay, so here's my thoughts and personal experience...
It's also (for me and at least IMO) an annoyance with how the tracker is set up. At least for submissions, it is used primarily as a two-way conversation (though one party is "the fink folks"). But SF trackers seem more tuned to group discussions. It's pretty daunting for me to say "I've got a few minutes, I'll clear some tracker items" and then have to wade through a number of ones that are waiting for the submitter to fix something or seem to be already a work-in-progress with someone else in order to find ones that have yet to be dealt with. I don't see a way to signal this status info, nor a way to sort by last-updated date (to see what's been waiting for *something* to happen for a while). So instead I wind up picking things that are personally interesting or are relatively simple, and complicated (-looking or -sounding) things languish.
Also, the machine where I test 10.3 packages was down for a while, and I'm pretty anal about trying things before committing. As part of this, I got annoyed by some things about fink itself, so I got involved in hacking the package manager.
dan
Yeah, I suspected the functionality of the package tracker was a good part of the problem. It really needs some sort of way to differentiate items that are waiting for the submitter to respond from items that are waiting for an "official fink person" to tend to. But, I realize that Sourceforge is what it is, and it would be a big job to design a proper tracker and find a way to host it.
So, would it help if I put up a web page that listed which tracker items were waiting for someone from fink to tend to? The list should also have the name of the fink guy who has been dealing with a package if it is a work in progress. What other info would be worthwhile? Last updated date, I guess.
I could probably update the list once a day or so. This would be a completely manual effort at first, but I have been thinking of learning PHP, and I will probably be stuck on the road for a few days with some spare evenings next week. So, I could try to hack together some sort of PHP/MYSQL thing that allowed some interaction - i.e. you tell it that you have responded to a tracker item, and it moves it over to the list of items are are waiting for the submitter. Comments?
Kevin Horton
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