On Mon, 2007-09-24 at 13:54 +0200, Ramon van Alteren wrote:
> > Currently, Release Engineering is quite understaffed. We have lost a
> > few release coordinators between the last release and now. The arch
> > teams are picking up the slack and getting people to fill the roles, but
> > they have to be trained, which means more time spent training and less
> > time spent working, which delays a release fairly significantly.
>
> Are you still looking for staff ? What roles/positions/work needs doing
> most ?
Release Engineering is almost always looking for staff. The primary
need is architecture release coordinators for the architectures which
have lost them. Anyone considering joining Release Engineering should
be capable of being an ebuild developer, if they're not already, as most
issues are in ebuild code. Familiarity with catalyst and genkernel is a
requirement. Strong python and bash skills are preferred.
> Are you aware that http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/staffing-needs/
> lists no staffing needs for release engineering ?
I am well aware. I have no intentions on asking our user pool for help
with this due to my own constraints. It has nothing to do with the
users themselves and everything to do with what we actually need. We
don't need people that we have to train, as that only takes time that we
already do not have to train the new person, compounding the problem
more than it helps. We don't really need people that are not on
architecture teams, because their work is representative of the team and
they need to work with the team in question. Unfortunately, this pretty
much leaves us pulling from our current developer pool.
> Where do I volunteer and what amount of time-investment can I expect ?
Well, first you would need to become a developer. I don't have time to
mentor someone myself, so you'd need to find a mentor and get yourself
into the developer pool. Aside that, you'd need to be able to use
catalyst and troubleshoot your own issues with it. I know that this
sounds really bad, but I don't mean it to be. It doesn't help me, at
all, if I have to teach someone. My familiarity with catalyst is such
that it is generally faster to do something myself than to teach someone
else to do it. Basically, we require people who are completely
self-motivated learners capable of reading code, understanding it, and
putting that new knowledge into practice without help.
The amount of time required can vary wildly, depending on the quality of
the tree for your architecture, just how crazy the architecture boot
sequence is, the speed of your hardware, etc. On average, I spend
anywhere from 20 to 40 hours a *week* during release times. I've spent
as little as 3 or 4 hours and as much as 60 hours. Also, Release
Engineering is one of the few places where deadlines are very important,
meaning you have to be able to actually commit to time lines and follow
through, on time. Of course, this makes Release Engineering one of the
more stressful jobs around Gentoo. Just ask anyone who has been hanging
around #gentoo-releng during a release... ;]
--
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation
