Hello Michal,
I didn't reply to original post to kernel-discuss, so let me
do a bit of cold shower now...
Wednesday, June 20, 2007, 3:30:52 AM, you wrote:
> Hello Gerhard, hello all h2200 owners!
>> BTW:
>> I was wondering that you have created a very fine Wiki page in your private
>> Wiki-Space at "http://www.handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/MichalPanczyk"
>> but without linking to it anywhere. Why have you made this effort if you don't
>> give others the chance to participate?
> I have created this page as a draft. I did want people to participate
> - actually that was my greatest intention. But I had a chat with Paul,
> and he convinced me that in this conversion it would be hard "for
> developers" to take care of it.
Yes. "Hard" as in there're not enough people and not enough
their time to do that on the global scale. And building bright future
in one single feud is just loss of time, IMHO.
> Imagine the number of machines in the CVS tree multiplied by number of
> kernel version "we" had.
Consider just counted number of ports in CVS now - 34. Just
updating such number of pages is the great chore, especially if they
contain duplicate, not really related to hardware information.
> That's quite a lot of work considering the
> state of some ports - being unmaintained.
> Of course, if You say that this can be handled by users, I will agree,
> but... Some changes must be done by people who actually tested the
> kernel and know exactly what problems might be experienced.... Plus
> looking at the h2200 mailing list - most of problems are handled by
> small number of people - where developers are in majority.... The same
> would probably apply to such wiki page.
> Right now I am thinking of:
> - in very short perspective - creating a page of TODO things
For tracking individual items, like bugs and TODOs, we have a
bugtracker: http://bugzilla.handhelds.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=__open__&product=linux-2.6
That's the place to store and track individual issues, allowing to
easy individual handling (commenting, etc.), and at the same time
powerful aggregation and querying capabilities. Right tool for right
task.
> - in longer perspective - doing these things:
> a) converting kernel status form "my personal" page (which I don't
> treat in this way - it is a place to convert ideas to some more
> realistic form) to actual kernel status of h2200 (which I feel the
> most involved in).
h2200 is just a random machine you randomly happen to have in
your hands now. There're dozens of other machines around - what about
them?
> That would include solutions for common problems -
> like we have just experienced with the sound module.
Well, idea here is that users simply should not face such
problems at all. Instead of writing stories for them how to deal with
them or to solve them in the first place? In our case (great lack of
developers), I believe most developers choose the second choice, even
at the expense of not maintaining nice list of known problems in wiki.
And in either way, this (and most other) problems are not
h2200 specific at all. All machines have sound modules, and all need
them loaded.
> b) creating a page, with test procedures of kernel/system components
> (ie. who to test if sound works)
Ah, nice, glad to know you have this in queue ;-). Because I
really wanted to summarize this mail with "and as you remember, we
talked about QA formalization, that would be *much* better investment
of effort" ;-)
> and recipes how to distinct/solve
> known problems (ie. load specific module)
And this shows that even here you want to do user-orientation.
Again, users simply should not do such things. And for developers,
it's never easy - they have to solve hard problems anyway, so giving
them one of hundred possible causes is not much helpful (you
physically won't be able to list all causes). That would be helpful
for beginner developers, but would resources put into maintenance be
worth outcome?
> c,d,... ) many others that I don't remember know or don't have time to
> write about... (I just typed in the most of things for my short
> perspective page).
> I hope that no one is going to be mad at me because I post it to h2200
> mailing list, but this involves some interesting issues.
> Most of newcomers that have h2200 device and spot that Linux is
> supported by their lovely devices ( like mine:D ) probably don't read
> the mailing lists and are surprised that some features that are
> obvious to work with windows don't work with Linux. The greatest
> example - buttons, or the power status not working properly.
> I am not sure if everybody at this port know that these problems have
> been solved long, long time ago and h2200 is _very_ usable with Linux
> now. I guess that there is one things missing at this port - lack of
> good communication between developers (that have solved these issues
> long time ago) and users (that don't read/search the list).
This assumes there're 2 groups which deal with Linux-on-PDA -
developers and users. That's not really the case. It's 3-layer
structure, where at the top there're users, they use products and
oftentimes five feedback to distro maintainers, and distro maintainers
work with individual downstream software project, be it the kernel or a
game.
So, working on improving user experience if distro side of
things. Of course, distro maintenance is pretty big effort, takes
involvement of many people, and it's pretty hard to work both on
specific project (like kernel), and on distro as the whole.
> In the
> first case - developers do inform the users about their (grate!!!!)
> achievements, but in unattractive, incoherent way (at the list only) -
> like "fire and forget" system. And then the same question are asked,
> more developers' time is wasted - they loose they patience and don't
> respond to next questions.
>>From the users point of view - who buys a car and signs to a fan club
> of particular brand/model to solve they basic problems ? In
> problematic situations users call the service line (mail the
> h2200-port) or some (the clever ones:D ) read the instructions (wiki
> pages). But the wiki pages or install instruction don't mention about
> possible problems with h2200....
> Why did I write all this text? Because I feel that there is a need for
> more cooperation between developers and users at hh.org. I am probably
> never going to be a real developer - I don't feel strong enough in
> kernel programing, development philosophy/habits/etiquette and in free
> communication in English. But I have spent a lot of time to find
> solutions for the problems I had with h2200 and that paid back -my
> h2200 is usable and I know how to bring it to this state.
Too bad, that you still treat that as h2200 belongings ;-(. We
just have this prolonged feudalistic stage which doesn't want to give
up on peoples' minds ;-).
> Now I am asking for some help from both sides:
> - users - in updating the wiki pages, (maybe we should have a Q&A page
> in h2200 port?), sharing solutions (for wiki pages, interesting
> projects involving ipaqs, ways to promote hh.org projects), finding
> bugs, etc.,
> - developers - in some web space professionally maintained [*] and
> keeping/building[**] fixed components in ipk form, and (maybe) sharing
> the latest (development) kernel in the web so that every user could
> try it out, without the need of compiling it by himself. That type of
> solution (together with test procedure page that I have mentioned
> earlier) would help in testing and finding bugs ....
So, you want after all to make your try on distro
maintenance... But why don't you want to join with one of existing
distros instead, so your effort will be not local randomly-directed
efforts, but instead part of bigger idea, and thus have more chances
to not be lost (or wasted effort in the first place) and to contribute
to Linux-on-PDA in general?
> I hope that there is going to be some discussion about the
> problems/ideas I mentioned and something good is going to come out of
> that.
> Finally I would like to add a note that I did not want to offend
> anybody by the text above. I just feel personally involved in this
> port and I wanted to express I care about it. If anybody felt offended
> - I am sorry and please don't feel this way.
I just hope that you're long enough around to watch and judge
the trends yourself. I also hope that you'll find interesting to
listen to experiences of folks who already tried the stuff you suggest
;-).
-- Best regards, Paul mailto:pmiscml_at_gmail.comReceived on Wed Jun 20 2007 - 04:56:42 EDT
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