Takashi Yoshii <yoshii.takashi@renesas.com> posted
4850DC5F.7090800@renesas.com, excerpted below, on Thu, 12 Jun 2008
17:20:47 +0900:
> I've got nothing to BTS so far, because my trial was so successful. So,
> maybe I should...
> - Test more packages of "sh" to find and report bugs?
> - or Test "~sh"s to change them to "sh" ?, or "" to "~sh" ?
> - or Test using (or providing?) binary at place like tinderbox?
> - Any others? (perhaps, seeking arch maintainer...)
Hi. I know little about SuperH personally, but perhaps the following
will be helpful general orientation and pointers toward more.
AFAIK, the Gentoo sh arch is severely understaffed ATM, and that's an
understatement. (I /believe/ most of the work has been done by one
person (possibly two), who has other Gentoo responsibilities as well, not
to mention the fact that Gentoo devs are all volunteers, so he has a day
job too.) That is why as you mentioned it has no current release or
stable profile.
Thus, if you have reasonable skills and a decent amount of time to
dedicate in the medium term, preferably two years or so minimum so the
mentoring time investment has some return, what Gentoo on that arch could
really use would be a dedicated arch developer. Yes, the personal
investment isn't trivial by a long shot, and it's entirely possible you
don't have that sort of time available to dedicate, but if you do and
want to, read over the dev handbook and seriously consider starting the
mentoring process.
If you don't have that sort of time or skills available, even a shorter
term lower time investment could be very beneficial for the arch. A
number of archs have what's called an arch tester position. This is a
fairly well defined position where you aren't a Gentoo dev but you work
very closely with one or more Gentoo devs, with them doing the final
commits based on your testing and results. Many such closely cooperating
users have ultimately become devs themselves, while others have remained
at the AT position by choice, often due to lack of time and resources to
be a full dev, but wanting to give what they can. While becoming a dev
has a purposefully longer testing and mentoring process, becoming an AT
is much simpler, altho there's usually (archs differ in AT procedures a
bit) a general ebuild quiz involved.
Then there's folks like me, who spend a lot of time on the various
channels/groups/lists/forums/etc (often being more comfortable in some
than others, I'm not an IRC person for instance and rarely do forums, so
spend most of my time on the lists/groups) trying to help out as best we
can, but who haven't taken a formal position of any sort. Of course,
that may lead to more later, or not. Personally, I don't consider myself
really skilled enough at this point to be a dev (tho I've been asked),
tho it's also a matter of not yet having really decided to make the
commitment and buckle down and do it.
So whatever level you are comfortable and chose to participate at,
welcome! Gentoo can put you to work, particularly with your alternative
arch experience! =8^)
Here's the developer handbook, which can be a very good place to start
even if you aren't directly targeting that initially, and should at least
answer some questions you no doubt already have, as well as provide you
some idea of what's involved if you do wish to head toward devhood.
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml If you're looking more at AT, that's to some degree defined by the arch
and arch-team in question, and certainly the dynamic on a small arch such
as sh will be rather different than on x86 or amd64, but here's the x86
arch-tester's FAQ, to give you an idea, at least.
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/x86/arch-testers-faq.xml Other than that, I'd suggest you contact the dev(s) for your arch
directly. The one listed for Sh is Mike Sterrett, aka mr_bones_ . You
can of course make yourself immediately useful by contributing bugs and
patches, etc. Many people find the bug day project very helpful at
introducing themselves to the larger community, for instance.
--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
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