Re: [Mageia-dev] About Mandriva tools future : Host Mandriva tools on github
On 3 October 2010 09:58, Fabrice Facorat fabrice.faco...@gmail.com wrote: Specifying what exactly is wrong is an essential issue here: - Just perl is hard to understand isn't a problem for users, users don't code it. but for dev and potential contributor this increase the antry barrier for contribution No. You are just moving the entry barrier against another dev group (those who would know perl but not eg C). And because of the manual memory management of the language you're promoting, you would both: - increase the actual barrier entry (need to understand how to properly do mem management, ...) - introduce new classes of bugs (and among them a lot of security ones (overwriting stack and the like) - Not being used by other distros is again not a problem, each distro has native tools that no other distros use (as misc said a couple of emails up) sure. But do Mandriva still have enough man power to maintain so many tools ? That's a nop argument. Rewriting from scratch needs more manpower whatever is the number of tools...
Re: [Mageia-dev] About Mandriva tools future : Host Mandriva tools on github
An old but interresting about interview for Mandriva's tools in perl: http://www.perl.com/pub/2005/02/24/mandrakelinux.html -- Dimitrios Glentadakis
Re: [Mageia-dev] About Mandriva tools future : Host Mandriva tools on github
Le 2 octobre 2010 17:52, Nicolas Lécureuil neoclust.mag...@gmail.com a écrit : 2010/10/2 Fabrice Facorat fabrice.faco...@gmail.com 2010/10/1 Sinner from the Prairy sinnerb...@gmail.com: Fabrice Facorat wrote: Mandriva tries that, with look'n'feel consistent on MCC, KDE and Gnome. draketools work on TUI or GUI. They work well. some tools does not work correctly however and are buggy Better is to fix them instead of rewrite all. you know, when something have been broken for more than 2 years ... at some point you may think that the best would be to just change it ;-) -- Close the World, Open the Net http://www.linux-wizard.net
Re: [Mageia-dev] About Mandriva tools future : Host Mandriva tools on github
On 2 October 2010 21:50, Fabrice Facorat fabrice.faco...@gmail.com wrote: Le 2 octobre 2010 17:52, Nicolas Lécureuil neoclust.mag...@gmail.com a écrit : 2010/10/2 Fabrice Facorat fabrice.faco...@gmail.com 2010/10/1 Sinner from the Prairy sinnerb...@gmail.com: Fabrice Facorat wrote: Mandriva tries that, with look'n'feel consistent on MCC, KDE and Gnome. draketools work on TUI or GUI. They work well. some tools does not work correctly however and are buggy Better is to fix them instead of rewrite all. you know, when something have been broken for more than 2 years ... at some point you may think that the best would be to just change it ;-) -- Close the World, Open the Net http://www.linux-wizard.net Specifying what exactly is wrong is an essential issue here: - Just perl is hard to understand isn't a problem for users, users don't code it. - Not being used by other distros is again not a problem, each distro has native tools that no other distros use (as misc said a couple of emails up) So, no, I wouldn't throw my old box out the window because if it works even if it's slow, until I buy a new box / can afford a new box. drakxtools work, until a viable alternative, if needed at all, is provided they should be kept. -- Ahmad Samir
Re: [Mageia-dev] About Mandriva tools future : Host Mandriva tools on github
Le 2010-10-01 06:38, Fabrice Facorat a écrit : I've been following closely all the Mandriva vs Mageia story. I found it unfortunate that we have to come to this way, but I guess there's a serious fracture between Mandriva and part of its community. We have no choice except to cope with this and try to do our best to allow this unfortunate situation to found a sensible solution in the future. As we know, one of the Mandriva strenght are the Mandriva tools, however Mandriva tools have some issues : - they are written in perl. Sorry for perl dev, but I do still think that perl is harder to understand than C-like based syntax langages. However we must admit that we are not going to rewrite all the Mandriva tools ;-) However better documentation ( PerlDoc tags ) could help a little. - Mandriva tools are not used by others distributions ( except PCLinuxOS, United Linux, and ... Mageia ) and so have few external contributions : They notably lack visibility. I do think also that Mandriva will have to use its ressources in an efficient way. Here aree my proposals, feel free to discuss : 1. host Mandriva tools on github or code.google.com. This will ease fork maintenance and tracking, to contribute back ( without having to have a Mandriva account ) 2. Make some decisions about the tools we should keep, and the ones we should ... trash. For example we did replace printerdrake with system-config-printer ( python ), and msec have been rewritten ( python ). Whereas I do think that system-config-printer is way buggier than printerdrake, I guess that at some points, we will have to do this more and more : replace some Mandriva tools with for example some Fedora ones. Please note however that this bring its own issues : python vs perl, and the integration with the rest of Mandriva infrastructure 3. A decision will have to be made concerning net_applet and NetworkManager 4. Whereas I do love rpmdrake, I do think also that something will have to be done about it as its UI is clearly outdated and not on par with the competition : - Ubuntu software center : http://seilo.geekyogre.com/2010/09/software-center-with-a-dose-of-zeitgeist-and-maybe-teamgeist/ , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Software_Center , https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareCenter - iTunes App Store : http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_to_download_iphone_apps_from_apple_itunes_store.html , http://cybernetnews.com/download-iphone-firmware-20-itunes-77-app-store-and-more/ - Interesting discussion about PackageKit direction : http://mairin.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/a-story-about-updates-and-people/ So we may have to completely rewrite rpmdrake UI or switch to packagekit with and urpmi backend. 5. Junior tasks contributions. I noticed while visiting the LibreOffice website. They have junior task for people willing to contribute to the codebase, and most of theses junior tasks consist to improve code clarity, fix comments. I guess that the same thing could be done with Mandriva tools, notably adding perldoc tags/comments. Last but not least, I know that on Mageia ML, there was a discussion about the people we should target. Here are some interesting reflexions : Sweet Caroline : http://mairin.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/sweet-caroline/ fedoraproject.org redesign update : http://mairin.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/fedoraproject-org-redesign-update/ You must be this tall to ride: __ : http://mairin.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/you-must-be-this-tall-to-ride-__/ Thanks for your observations Fabrice. Just speaking from the user point of view. Let us not lose sight that one of the strong points of Mandriva/Mageia is the use of the MCC. Having all the controls under one title and well integrated is what really distinguishes Mandriva from the other distros. Practically in all of the news items that I have read of Mandriva, they mention the powerful tools at the users' disposal to help in configure/maintain the Mandriva distro, and this type of comment has been going on for years. I hope that Mageia would not stray from this tool. Whichever way the devs decide to programme the tools from the back-en does not matter to the user. How easily it is to configure/maintain the distro is what counts to the user and it is quite a strong selling point. When I help out people with their Mandriva setup and I tell them to go to their MCC (if they are not familiar with it, I usually say You know, the blue sceen and red wrench thingy at the bottom of your monitor., they are confortable in using it. The only thing that I find lacking for the MCC is the lack of immediate help. If a user has never used a section of MCC, they will normally abandon the use of that section. But if there were a help button that would explain, in a graphic way (either video or by slide show) the use of that section, then that would go a long way in helping out. I sincerely hope that the MCC (Mageia Contol Centre) will not be abandoned. Marc
Re: [Mageia-dev] About Mandriva tools future : Host Mandriva tools on github
2010/10/1 Marc Paré m...@marcpare.com: Somehow I have a feeling this thread will be a deja vu of the rpm vs. deb thread... Yes, the magic of mailists strikes again. And of course, the same arguments will be restated again because people can not browse back to the previous arguments. In a lot of cases, Déjà vu could almost be called the alias of Mailist. LOL this is not rpm vs deb or synaptic vs smart vs rpmdrake. This is about making some decisions about some tools. Some of the Mandriva tools have outdate UI, cluttered UI and even are sometimes buggy. The situation persists since many years already, so at some point we should ask ourself : are we going to rewrite them, notably the UI, to make them be more 2010, or should we use another tool with another GUI. -- Close the World, Open the Net http://www.linux-wizard.net
Re: [Mageia-dev] About Mandriva tools future : Host Mandriva tools on github
Le vendredi 01 octobre 2010 à 12:52 +0200, Olivier Blin a écrit : Fabrice Facorat fabrice.faco...@gmail.com writes: 1. host Mandriva tools on github or code.google.com. This will ease fork maintenance and tracking, to contribute back ( without having to have a Mandriva account ) Why host them externally? A self-hosted forge is probably better. Yup, and I can only add a link http://mako.cc/writing/hill-free_tools.html But actually, just moving to git could make contributions easier, because of the ability for developpers to commit locally, and push incremental patchsets. I would be in favor of 1 git repository for 1 software, even if I didn't see people complaining that svn prevented them to provides patches :) On the infrastructure side, it was also proposed to look at gitorious for this. Is it packaged in mandriva ? ( if not, maybe that would be a good way to help ). -- Michael Scherer
Re: [Mageia-dev] About Mandriva tools future : Host Mandriva tools on github
Le 2010-10-01 07:23, Tux99 a écrit : On Fri, 1 Oct 2010, Fabrice Facorat wrote: This is about making some decisions about some tools. Some of the Mandriva tools have outdate UI, cluttered UI and even are sometimes buggy. The situation persists since many years already, so at some point we should ask ourself : are we going to rewrite them, notably the UI, to make them be more 2010, or should we use another tool with another GUI. Personally I don't see anything wrong with the GUI of the draktools. If imrpoving them means to rewrite them from scratch or replace them with inferior tools from other distros, then that would be a big effort and/or step backwards just for the estetics. Substance counts a lot more than appearance to me. P.S: cc'ing in both cooker and mageia lists is not a good idea as many people are not on both lists so the discussion will just split in two Ooops, Tux99, it also looks like your post has broken the thread on the dev side. The thread probably best belongs on the dev mailist. Marc
Re: [Mageia-dev] About Mandriva tools future : Host Mandriva tools on github
On 1 October 2010 12:52, Olivier Blin mag...@blino.org wrote: But actually, just moving to git could make contributions easier, because of the ability for developpers to commit locally, and push incremental patchsets. It's easier for us developers but more difficult for translators that learned to use SVN (which was easy for them to swtich from CVS since the commands were similar)
Re: [Mageia-dev] About Mandriva tools future : Host Mandriva tools on github
2010/10/1 Tux99 tux99-...@uridium.org: On Fri, 1 Oct 2010, Fabrice Facorat wrote: This is about making some decisions about some tools. Some of the Mandriva tools have outdate UI, cluttered UI and even are sometimes buggy. The situation persists since many years already, so at some point we should ask ourself : are we going to rewrite them, notably the UI, to make them be more 2010, or should we use another tool with another GUI. Personally I don't see anything wrong with the GUI of the draktools. there's many things wrong. Just try Wndows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 tools http://www.win2008r2workstation.com/win2008r2/themes http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/29/installing-iis-7-on-windows-server-2008-or-windows-server-2008-r2/ http://www.verboon.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/2010061520h01_291.png http://4sysops.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/windows-server-2008-r2-bpa.png If imrpoving them means to rewrite them from scratch or replace them with inferior tools from other distros, then that would be a big effort and/or step backwards just for the estetics. Substance counts a lot more than appearance to me. again you're somewhat wrong iPod and iPhones are inferirors products technically speaking, but they have better appearance ( good marketing, which is about appearance ) and so are successful. -- Close the World, Open the Net http://www.linux-wizard.net
Re: [Mageia-dev] About Mandriva tools future : Host Mandriva tools on github
Le vendredi 1 octobre 2010 15:15:26, Fabrice Facorat a écrit : iPod and iPhones are inferirors products technically speaking, but they have better appearance ( good marketing, which is about appearance ) and so are successful. I don't want an iPod or an iPhone.
Re: [Mageia-dev] About Mandriva tools future : Host Mandriva tools on github
On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 15:15, Fabrice Facorat fabrice.faco...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/10/1 Tux99 tux99-...@uridium.org: Substance counts a lot more than appearance to me. again you're somewhat wrong iPod and iPhones are inferirors products technically speaking, but they have better appearance ( good marketing, which is about appearance ) and so are successful. Appearance is not their only reason to be successful at this time. Both (substance, appearance) are crucial. If you only consider one without balancing, making it consistent with the other, you're not going down the right path. The interface, the whole experience with it is the product. Romain
Re: [Mageia-dev] About Mandriva tools future : Host Mandriva tools on github
On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 8:20 AM, Samuel Verschelde sto...@laposte.net wrote: I don't want an iPod or an iPhone. I do but they're so expensive :P -- Juancho
