Re: Request for assistance maintaining LibreWolf

[Ian Eure <ian@retrospec.tv>]

Hi Sergio,

Sergio Pastor Pérez <sergio.pastorperez@outlook.es> writes:

> Hello Ian.
>
> I cannot help you since I don't have commit access. But I want 
> to thank
> you for your hard work, I'm currently using your package.
>

Thank you for the kind words, they truly mean a lot to me.

Whatever the state of Guix proper, you can always find the current 
version of LibreWolf in my personal channel[1], though I don’t 
have a public substitute server, so long build times will await 
you if you choose this route.


> We should try to come up with a solution that alleviates the 
> burden on
> the maintainers. Given how often this issue arises, what if we 
> try, as
> a collective, to suggest new mechanisms that would improve the
> situation?
>
> If I recall correctly, someone suggested having a development 
> branch in
> which, once the QA passes, the patches get automatically 
> merged. I know
> some people rose concerns about the slowness of the QA system 
> for this
> to be an effective solution, and there is also the issue 
> ordering the
> patch application.
>
> If the previous solution is ruled out, I would like to know the 
> opinion
> of the Guix community on a voting system. I'm imagining a system 
> where
> we reuse the mailing infrastructure we have, where each accepted 
> mail in
> the guix devel mailing list has 1 vote for a given patch, that 
> way we
> avoid multiple votes from the same entity and would allow people 
> without
> commit access, but active on the Guix development, to 
> participate. So,
> we could set up a threshold where if a patch gets 10 votes from
> non-committers the merge would be done; preferably automated, 
> but if it's
> not possible, committers would know what is ready to be merged 
> without
> effort and what the community wants.
>

I’m not sure this would be effective, because the QA service is 
unreliable.  I regularly see patches which simply don’t get picked 
up by it, including many of my own.  At other times, it lags very 
far behind.  I don’t think it’s reliable enough to be in the 
critical path for anything.  Guix is supposed to be a 
rolling-release distro, so it feels strange to have a develop 
branch which moves even faster.

Thanks,

  — Ian


[1]: https://codeberg.org/ieure/atomized-guix