Re: Buying hardware with Debian money
On Sun, Oct 20, 2013 at 11:41 AM, Lucas Nussbaum lea...@debian.org wrote: Hi, I received a few requests for hardware purchases, that I think are worth discussing with the project as a whole in order to progress towards having clear guidelines for what is acceptable and what isn't in terms of spending Debian money. Please provide feedback on the proposed decisions -- they are not final yet. A. Memory expansion cards for m68k buildds (expected cost: 500 EUR) === Widely quoting from a private mail: | Debian has an unofficial m68k (Amiga) port. It became unofficial | mainly because build daemons were not fast enough to keep up with | security updates in a timely manner. The port has an active developers | community (see https://lists.debian.org/debian-68k/). Debian is the only | Linux distribution with a working m68k port, and m68k is still popular | among fans of retro computers. It takes little financial effort to keep | the port running; what is needed is money for small hardware upgrades. I'm inclined to APPROVE the request, for the following reasons: - even if the port is unofficial, and is very unlikely to become an official port again in the future, it benefits from an active developers community composed of several DDs. - experience has shown that porting work on one architecture often benefits other architectures (since similar problems show up across different architectures). - the amount of requested money is relatively low. Obviously, the following conditions would apply: 1) the hardware bought would have to go to buildds used through debian-ports.org, and/or to porter boxes that are widely open to the Debian community. 2) if the machine stops being used for Debian-related work, the hardware must be transferred to another DD. B. Powerful machine for d-i development (expected cost: 1.5k-2k EUR?) = A debian-installer developer writes: up to now, I've always used my own hardware for Debian work, but I'd like that to change slightly due to my work on d-i. I intend to work on at least the following topics: 1. performing more frequent d-i uploads: http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2013/10/msg00194.html 2. implementing some kind of official images with backported linux kernels (and possibly other needed bits from the right suite); 3. implementing automated regression testing, so that we can work properly on 1., 2., and also on stable uploads; dailies would also benefit from that; people from -cd@ (Steve, mostly) would probably appreciate it as well. Some desktop machine with fast disc(s), a bunch of RAM and some CPU power would be nice, so that I could play with a bunch of VMs (most likely, primary targets will be amd64 and i386, but virtually anything qemu can deal with). Some disc space to hold a local (possibly partial) mirror would be a plus, since there's plenty of deb/udeb fetching during d-i builds and when testing installation. Do you think something can be arranged on Debian funds to that effect? If that looks reasonable, any specific site/vendor I should be looking into to come up with some specs that would be nice to have, so that you ACK/NACK it? In which case, any upper bound? Or any other ideas? Of course the HW can be shipped over to the next person wanting to work that much on d-i in case/when I start burning out. (FWIW I don't plan on leaving the d-i RM position before jessie is released. ;)) [ Also, I do realize having some nice hardware racked up in some datacenter would be nice for testing purposes, but until automated regression testing is implemented, one needs to rely on clicking and typing into a VM, so as to debug/develop some framework to perform automated testing. A datacenter-hosted machine would also not help with the “preparing an upload” side, which still needs some trusted, local machine IMVHO. ] I'm inclined to APPROVE the request, for the following reasons: - the machine would be primarly (only?) used for working on Debian - the specifics of the tasks justify hardware hosted locally (VNC to a remote machine is possible of course, but latency makes it quite inefficient to do testing that way) Of course, as quoted in the original mail, if the DD were to stop their involvement in d-i development before the machine reaches its end-of-life, the machine would have to be shipped to someone else. C. Laptop for developer (expected cost: 1k-1.5k EUR?) = A DD is asking for help to buy a new laptop. He maintains or participates in the maintenance of a few medium-to-large packages. His only mobile computer is an Atom-based netbook with a rather small screen, which is not powerful enough to do packaging work (he also has a desktop computer). He describes himself as a
Aw: Re: Buying hardware with Debian money
Hello, On Sun, Oct 20, 2013 at 11:41 AM, Lucas Nussbaum lea...@debian.org wrote: Hi, I received a few requests for hardware purchases, that I think are worth discussing with the project as a whole in order to progress towards having clear guidelines for what is acceptable and what isn't in terms of spending Debian money. Please provide feedback on the proposed decisions -- they are not final yet. A. Memory expansion cards for m68k buildds (expected cost: 500 EUR) === ... B. Powerful machine for d-i development (expected cost: 1.5k-2k EUR?) = ... C. Laptop for developer (expected cost: 1k-1.5k EUR?) = Brian: That said, it does seem that the situation with C is suboptimal, and perhaps he could try to see if any DDs have a spare laptop that they could lend/give, as even a 5-6 year old laptop seems that it would be better than what he has now? +1 The community spirit among ourselves should be supported this way and maybe we find more ways towards it. How about the DPL first deciding if something is sufficiently close to our key project ideas to receive direct funding from the Debian money, and if not, if the Debian project should ask for the explicit funding for a project through its communication channels from the community, much like what kickstarter or indiegogo do. For the ABC above, it could go like B : direct funding for the installer team A : request to the community a large to donate money for the M68K project to update their memory. I volunteer to donate 20 €/$ whatever. C : reject, or change to a request to forward a used machine matching some specification for a student ... I find the request C a bit strange or I do not get it right. For every DD there are machines to log in to for building packages. Right? Hence, even only with a Raspberry at hand, there are tons of useful bits to contribute to our distribution and so much every student can afford. Steffen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/trinity-3bb086d2-548d-47fa-82b3-aeabbdb6dab6-1382347051603@3capp-gmx-bs40
debbugs status (Re: Help bringing bugs.debian.org / debbugs back on track)
Hi Paul, Paul Wise wrote: On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 8:51 AM, Filipus Klutiero wrote: However, I am not convinced that development of bugs.debian.org should go through Debbugs development. Unfortunately, I am not an ITS-s expert, and I can't recommend a particular engine. There are many free ITS engines, some of which are worst, but in general, as an engine user, I do not like Debbugs compared to most other engines. Debbugs's technology doesn't look great, but I'm entirely unaware of the internals. My skepticism on its future really comes from the current number of users and developers, and most importantly its advancement compared to alternatives. I can only agree that the ITS needs help and that Debbugs can use development, but I'm not convinced that's an optimal use of our currently nearly inexistent ITS manpower (see https://lists.debian.org/stats/debian-debbugs.png ). Please don't switch bugs.debian.org away from debbugs. I don't want to have to leave the Debian project but some misguided folks doing that would be one of the triggers for that. None of the other bug tracking systems have anywhere near the amount of features or usability that debbugs has. Switching bugs.debian.org away from Debbugs does not mean switching to another ITS engine in its current form. As discussed, migrating from Debbugs would involve implementing some features Lucas mentioned which the average ITS engine doesn't have (unless one would have them all, which is as unlikely as desirable). Lucas has mentioned some features, feel free to mention others. Even better, let's try to make http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue-tracking_systems reflect Debbugs's feature richness as much as possible. Currently, what it reflects looks like the opposite of your perception. I'm not sure if version tracking should be mentioned and, if so, how (version tracking is short, but doesn't really say what we mean by that). [...] -- Filipus Klutiero http://www.philippecloutier.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/5265ebe8.2020...@gmail.com
Re: Help bringing bugs.debian.org / debbugs back on track
Hi Steve, Steve McIntyre wrote: On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 08:51:15PM -0400, Filipus Klutiero wrote: Thanks for bringing this up, our ITS definitely needs love. I investigated the ITS team in 2010 and found it was already broken (although one member disagreed with that assessment, qualifying the team's status as fine). The most urgent issue must be fixing the administration of bugs.debian.org, but development should also be a priority. To set the record straight for anybody fortunate enough to not have any background here: Filipus / Philippe / chealer (to pick some of his names) has been a thorn in the side of the BTS admins for several years. My own experience from talking with him and the BTS folks is that he's very difficult to deal with. If expressing a bad opinion of a contributor to debian-project constitutes a constructive contribution, I imagine it would also be a constructive contribution to let that contributor know when you develop that bad opinion. Or do even better, and tell the contributor why you hold such an opinion. His broken comment above undoubtedly refers to his experiences when he was banned from using a lot of the BTS features for abuse. The broken comment above refers to an investigation of the ITS team which started in 2007, and which lea...@debian.org was made aware of. As such, if there is anybody whose opinions should be ignored more about how our bug tracker should be run and developed, I would struggle to identify such a person. Thank you for reading. Thank you for writing this. I'm happy to see that you regained interest in our ITS. Would it be reasonable to expect that you will find enough time to answer the mail below, given that you found the time needed for writing an ad hominem attack^W^W^Wunbiased and perfectly neutral informative warning on the topic? On 2010-03-31 17:25, Filipus Klutiero wrote: Le décembre 15, 2008 12:48:19 PM, Filipus Klutiero a écrit : Le December 15, 2008 05:57:56 am, vous avez écrit : On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 02:37:55AM -0500, Filipus Klutiero wrote: Hi Steve, in September, I contacted you regarding an investigation on the administration of bugs.debian.org. So far, all I obtained is that the team isn't on your list of teams requiring investigation. As you seem to be pretty busy and I don't feel comfortable seeing the issue persist much longer, I'm thinking about resuming the investigation myself. I suppose at this point this will mean pretty quickly that the results will be published. I thank you for your time so far. Unless I hear from you shortly, I should go on, but please don't take this as a depreciation of your help. Hi, Apologies for not getting back to you sooner. The BTS team *is* on my list of teams that I'm talking to, but I have to tell you that it's quite a way down in priority terms. I know you've had problems personally, but there are much worse problems project-wide that need dealing with first. All right. I have not seen any development with the team since we started discussing. Note that I am currently much less active in the project, being prevented from doing bug triaging, so if you can conclude the verification of the BTS team without any more discussion with me, don't forget to let me know when you're done. Take care, Filipus Hi Steve, it's been over a year since we started discussing this issue and I haven't had any news. Was there progress with owner? If not, could you give me, and perhaps the project, an update on your teams survey? For my part, I just realized that I am still banned from cont...@bugs.debian.org. I saw Don Armstrong send a Bits o' Bugs from the BTS in August 2009, but nothing reassuring. This issue has been lasting for too long already and I really want to see progress soon. Filipus -- Filipus Klutiero http://www.philippecloutier.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/5265f107.2050...@gmail.com
