Thomas de Grenier de Latour wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 10:21:54 +0100,
> Ciaran McCreesh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
>>* If we're looking to increase the flow of end users -> super users ->
>>developers, perhaps we should focus more upon improving development
>>tools or development documentation.
>
>
> I would also suggest creation of a gentoo-dev-help@ mailing-list.
> Something similar to what, i guess, the homonym IRC chan is, but for
> people who don't like IRC. Maybe i'm wrong and that's not the
> intention, but after 4 years of reading on gentoo-dev@ (yeah, today is
> anniversary of my subscription - yik, that's more than 36K emails in
> this maildir) , my feeling is that it's not the right place for users
> to ask technical questions about development/contributing (ebuilds
> writing, etc.). It's not that i fear this ML, but i see it mainly as a
> place for dev-to-dev communication on general/important topics (gleps
> discussion, common sense reminders, random flamewars, etc.), and thus i
> see the occasional "How {c,sh}ould i do something?" messages about
> small details as somehow off-topic, and i tend to avoid posting some.
>
> Seeing how more numerous this kind of messages are on "Portage &
> Programming" forums, or on gentoo-user*@ lists, i guess i'm not the
> only user with such feeling. But forums or users MLs are not really
> satisfactory for non-obvious questions, because the devs/users rate
> there is too low.
>
> So, what i usualy do when i'm not sure about something, in an ebuild i
> wrote for instance, is to post it as-is on bugs.g.o, with the
> questions left open in my report. But they will stay unanswered if
> the bug falls in the "maintainer-wanted@" oubliettes, or if the
> assignee is too short in time to explain me why he choosed one solution
> rather than an other. And even if i get my answer, it will be from a
> single dev, whereas others might have had a different views on the
> topic.
>
> Finally, i think such a mainling list could give good hints on what to
> improve in the documentation. Some legitimate questions may point to
> real lacks in the documentation, and some answers could be starting
> point for new chunks to add to the official or unofficial handbooks.
>
> --
> TGL.
+1, plus the ML is archived unlike IRC, and users can search archives
and we could more easily compile a FAQ about ebuild writing and such.
-Alec Warner
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
