[Slackbuilds-users] OPTIONAL field [was: qemu/spice-gtk and usbredir]

[Erik Hanson]

On Sun, 06 Nov 2016 08:05:01 +0100
Franzen <slackbuilds at schoepfer.info> wrote:

> > Even if I were to explicitly say "don't bother with
> > the OPTIONAL field" I know they would check it. They're just really
> > good people that way, focused on the quality of our repository.
> > Regardless of what I say, they're going to feel burdened by it.
> > None of us want junk in the repo, or broken OPTIONAL lines.
> > This is just a reality, and I'm going to fight against more work for
> > these volunteer workers that put so much passion into this project.
> > They have families and lives and I care for them deeply.  
> 
> So, even if you would like to change something general like the 
> OPTION-field
> on SBo, it will hardly happen because of the workload?
> This is not meant offending, really, i just want to get the point.
> 
> If nothing gonna be changed now, it's fair to say that, to not make
> the OPTIONAL-discussion a fight against windmills.

No. Discussions are fine, we've made changes based on public
discourse in the past. What appears before us is a handful of people
really want to write some tool that plows through optional deps
automatically. They don't want to read the README files, or maybe
they don't need to, but I feel it's a bad idea to let EVERYBODY off
the hook when it comes to the READMEs.

I'm just one admin who decided to chime in with my thoughts on the
issue. I'm in no way the sole arbiter of all things SBo. If I see that
any number of admins view this issue differently, I'm happy to take
their considerations and concede.

> If it's all about manpower, something should be done about that.
> Maybe the community can get more ability to contribute in some ways, 
> beside providing SlackBuilds.

This particular issue is very much not just about manpower.


-- 
Erik