A Call For Help

Many of you use smart. And a few of you program. Gustavo Niemeyer needs your help.

<niemeyer> I'm getting to a point that I'm getting somewhat tired of maintaining Smart across all distributions, to be honest
<niemeyer> My time is quite limited, and the number of variables that change across so many environments, and the number of patched Smarts out there, is mind blowing.
<niemeyer> To contribute to the situation, there's pretty much no one else coding on it and fixing bugs actively
<niemeyer> Mauricio does help a good bit, but it's not enough
<afb> secret know-how that is embedded within the yum and apt handlers themselves
<niemeyer> Yep
<niemeyer> and Yast
<afb> hard for smart to do a good job then, when it doesn't hold all the pieces
<niemeyer> Many times they go beyond the basic packaging rules, and do something nuts
<niemeyer> Like provdes == upgrades, in yast2 (argh)
<niemeyer> afb: It would actually not be hard
<niemeyer> afb: Smart is way more flexible than most systems
<afb> looking at porting yum-security, for example
<niemeyer> afb: But even then, as you say, someone has to be aware of the details, and code them in
<niemeyer> I really can't hold all of that by myself
<afb> another example are the "virtual" packages that Fink uses for system stuff
<afb> in order to use Smart there, those needs to be translated to a "special channel"
<afb> nothing is impossible, just lots of little detail to be added if wanting to "replace"
<afb> that being said, it is working fine for day-to-day usage so I'm over all pretty happy
<afb> niemeyer: but it does have a certain "swimming upstream" feeling to all of it...
<niemeyer> afb: Right, I totally understand that
<niemeyer> afb: To me, it wouldn't feel so bad if there were more people involved in the project itself
<niemeyer> afb: But since I started Smart (and APT-RPM/Synaptic, to be honest), packaging seems to be an area that people just want to see working right
<niemeyer> So over the years it can get frustrating to be trying to swim upstream alone
<afb> seems like most agreed to disagree, and put another wrapper on top of their favorite solver
<afb> guess that is a lot easier do "succeed" politicially than fixing the underlaying layer instead
<niemeyer> I have no political intention to make Smart support other distributions.. on the contrary
<niemeyer> I want to see it working flawlessly everywhere
<afb> pretty much because no-one is really interested in working on it / with it there
<niemeyer> But I can't do it myself
<niemeyer> afb: Precisely


So, who wants to help out?

Feel free to post here, ask me, or go to #smart on freednode.

Niemeyer is quite open to suggestions. So this isn't something where if you suggest it he'll say no, unless it's a security risk.

Smart is written in python with C plugins and gtk (pygtk) for the gui. Understanding any of these is good. Willingness is all that is required. Whether you want to help with documentation, patches, building packages, or coding for smart itself.

So let's go people, it's time to help out the open source community. We're not talking about money. Just your time and skill. If you don't know python, we'll help you out.

So how 'bout it?

Is there a specific list somewhere of things that need to be worked on?

Is there a specific list somewhere of things that need to be worked on?
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