05:25:06 mstone: incidentally...
<br/>05:25:07 mstone: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-olpc-list/2009-October/msg00000.html
<br/>05:25:37 mstone: (since I know you care about hearing when people get 
<br/>                   diverted from actual contribution but Dumb Administrivia)
<br/>05:28:45 mchua: Ah, thanks! Yeah, I'll get out my Dumb Administrivia bludgeon 
<br/>                 and see what we can do.
<br/>05:29:23 mstone: :)
<br/>05:29:54 mstone: it's not a huge deal, but I thought you'd appreciate having 
<br/>                   something concrete to point at.
<br/>05:30:41 mstone: mchua: though, come to think of it, I didn't even mention 
<br/>                   the hoops I had to jump through before hitting that wall 
<br/>                   just in order to try...
<br/>05:30:57 mstone: I just jumped, because I knew that I wouldn't block on any 
<br/>                   humans.
<br/>05:31:18 mchua: I do - thanks! Yeah, hacking people-systems is like hacking 
<br/>                 code in that tracebacks are helpful for bug advocacy.
<br/>05:31:41 mchua: hrm. Is it a process I should try to walk through and document 
<br/>                 the pain points of?
<br/>05:31:42 mstone: but, in fact, I had to track down an old password for rhbz, 
<br/>                   generate a new one, search for related tickets [which was so 
<br/>                   slow that I gave up and just filed], filed the ticket, 
<br/>05:31:47 mchua: (how bad/common do you reckon they'd be?)
<br/>05:31:56  * mchua listens
<br/>05:31:57 mstone: I'll get to that in a minute
<br/>05:32:14 mstone: then, after I filed the ticket, I thought to myself: "gee, I 
<br/>                   know this is really simple to fix. why don't I just go fix 
<br/>                   it?"
<br/>05:32:39 mstone: so I had to figure out what packages to install (remember, I 
<br/>                   don't have fedora installed on my machine!)...
<br/>05:32:51 mstone: turned out that I needed "fedora-packager", which actually 
<br/>                   worked great once I found it.
<br/>05:33:35 mstone: then I had to find the "updating cvs instructions" [which at 
<br/>                   least I knew about!], renew my koji cert, find the 
<br/>                   appropriate ssh key, do the cvs checkout, write the patch...
<br/>05:33:43 mstone: and then I couldn't commit it. :)
<br/>05:34:24 mstone: most people, I imagine, use their packaging credentials 
<br/>                   regularly and so don't need to renew/find them all at once 
<br/>                   like this.
<br/>05:34:44 mstone: also, most people who do fedora packaging probably do it on 
<br/>                   fedora machines, rather than in fedora chroots on debian 
<br/>                   machines.
<br/>05:35:08 mstone: but still -- this is an awful lot of work just to provide a 
<br/>                   4-line patch.
<br/>05:35:22 mchua: I've been banging my head against the Barrier To Packaging And 
<br/>                 Patching lately.
<br/>05:35:42 mstone: (and then, of course, there was the test environment 
<br/>                   generation and the actual diagnosis, solution, and testing 
<br/>                   before this!)
<br/>05:36:00 mchua: I've come to believe that most people who do fedora packaging 
<br/>                 probably do it on a regular basis because the people who don't 
<br/>                 have given up because there's just so much *stuff* to do.
<br/>05:36:12 mchua: s/stuff/overhead - that's a better word.
<br/>05:36:37 mstone: mchua: git, bzr, and mercurial have a pretty good idea in 
<br/>                   this department, which is that they make it *trivial* to 
<br/>                   send patches via email
<br/>05:36:59 mstone: git format-patch -1 | git send-email --to foo@bar.com :)
<br/>05:37:08 mstone: no credentials required.
<br/>05:37:54 mstone: now, I'm definitely not going to claim that this is the 
<br/>                   right solution for packaging, but it should at least be 
<br/>                   thought-provoking.
<br/>05:39:11 mchua: +1. mind if I share this convo with some folks who might be 
<br/>                 able to Make It Better?
<br/>05:39:22 mstone: oh, please feel free.
<br/>05:39:25 mchua: both your sugar patch in specific, and the packaging 
<br/>                 experience in general.
<br/>05:39:30 mchua: ok. I'll cc you on that.
<br/>05:39:39 mstone: sounds good.
<br/>05:40:16 mstone: as I said -- I don't want to make a big deal out of it; I 
<br/>                   simply want to make the minimal amount of noise necessary to 
<br/>                   give people who care about this sort of thing one more 
<br/>                   "spark" to add to their measurements.