[gNewSense-users] further inane comments by me (or if you were offended then this might help some)

[Paul O'Malley - gnu's not unix -]

I appear to have offended some people yesterday, for this I say sorry, 
please read on and I will try to give the same message without the rant.

I did lash out pretty hard yesterday, the reason is that in the past 
people have come into the gNewSense space and whipped up a "lets do 
this" and left it there.

This is bad for all involved and those who are running the project have 
a lot to carry. Allow me use a Gaelic phrase.

"Is trom Cearc i bhfad."
(Gealic) Translation: "A hen is heavy over a long distance."

In other words what looks like something simple is quite a commitment 
over time. So while starting it up and getting a release out the door is 
not bad, please be aware that the maintaniace of many single changes 
increases the problems faced by the project.

When Brian and I started out we had a singular objective.
Even if we did not get far to make every step repeatable.

The more single changes have to be managed the greater the gap from the 
original source becomes.

In the end with enough managed changes you would be better with your own 
 tree. However that would need about 5 or 6 full time people or at 
least people who put a lot of effort into it.

Pointing at Slackware would be a mistake Patrick has done a huge job but 
he is at it full time and does not do multi arch (at least as far as I 
know).

So what have you got.

For every change that takes place there is obviously some issue upstream.

For every change that takes place when you rebuild the system you have 
to debug new or altered versions of these packages.

For every change that takes place you don't want regression of a freedom 
bug.

So perhaps this more than the last rant which was an explosion based on 
what I saw as "here we go again" (and perhaps incorrectly), can explain 
why I say, if you want to run something as vast as a different arch then 
you really need to get familiar with that arch to see how its upstream 
would cope.

Hope this helps a bit.

P.