Re: n th's try to ask for help / non-X86 arch

On Sun, 7 Mar 2004 22:45:24 +0100
Marc-Christian Petersen <[email protected]> wrote:

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> Hi all,
> 
> I don't know how often I've asked for help on wolk-devel mailinglist, how
> often I've asked for non-X86 arch access / helpers, but now with 2.6-WOLK I
> try it again.

[snippety snip]

Marc,

You're asking for the right things, but perhaps it would help to broaden the channels a little. I'm daresay no-one who actually follows this list or the forums has the technical expertise necessary to really put in on non-x86 arch development, although Andras is more capable than many, to my knowledge.

Now I know you're a Debian guy, but I was thinking maybe some sort of assistance could be sourced from the Gentoo project also. By it's very nature, it is a good developer's platform and attracts some interesting people. As Portage is a highly abitious project (it's scope is not limited to even GNU/Linux in the longer term) I believe there is a rich (albeit understaffed) array of talent on offer. There are specific sub-projects for sparc, ppc and so forth. Furthermore, your patchset does have several admirers in the community at large so ... who knows?

Now, I'm not an official developer but I do have a few connections and would be quite happy to run it by the gentoo-server crowd in the first instance - if you wish. /me picks up his cheerleading pom-poms again ...

That reminds me, I need to get your 2.6 sources into Portage so I'll see if I can chase nerdboy up with regard to committing them (the 2.4 stuff is fully up-to-date).

Also, don't take this amiss - but your record on commitment to the branch has made some people wary in the sense that they might be worried that the project will simply die without word or warning, or that you'll just disappear. Yes, I know it's very tough work (especially being a one-man army) but people do appreciate your work. It follows though, that they need to know that the project is going to remain active over a long-term period. I know you don't owe anyone anthing, but the long-term silence and period of inactivity in terms of 2.4 WOLK development did upset a few people. Even I had resigned myself to the idea that the project was dead. If I may say so, the best thing is just to let people know what's going on, even if you do find that maintaining it is too much hard work one day. Believe me, if that assurance can be made I think you'll find it a lot easier to get help and find a
  few developers with whom you can form a mutually beneficial and constructive working rela
 tionship.

One more thing. I have had a few off-the-wall chats with a couple of people (mostly Gentoo devs) about your 2.6 branch. You know you're on to something when even Livewire doesn't think that they suxx0rs ;) In any case, The vast majority of them are very excited by it, but they almost unanimously wish that it wasn't based on -mm. I certainly am not comfortable with the idea of running -mm (or any related kernel) on a production server. Having said that, 2.6 is beginning to mature ... as evidenced by the constantly reducing size of the -mm patchset. Some patches in -mm _are_ very interesting (lazy-read-ahead, vm tuneups and so forth). But many of them seem quite experimental, and some of it is just stuff which would only be of interest to hardcore kernel developers (for instance, one of them is a simple debugging hook to profile a function because they suspect it isn't used anymore - do we
  really need that sort of thing?) At the very least, I would suggest that the amount of pa
 tches that are included from -mm is slimmed down somewhat. I bet you that many would be much more convinced that these could be the ultimate 2.6 sources (for server use and otherwise) of the future!

Just my 2 pence anyway ...

Regards,

--Kerin Francis Millar


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