Re: Getting a move on for 8.2 beta

Tom Lane wrote:
> Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> writes:
>
>> Bruce Momjian wrote:
>>
>>> Oh, lots of grunt work. I can see that working, but at a high cost.
>>>
>
>
>> I doubt it. Let's just start with bugs, since that's the easy case
>> anyway. Our real volume is pretty low, so the cost of maintaining it
>> should not be high. I am assuming we would not be including HEAD, but
>> only stable branches. With HEAD the volume would be quite a bit higher,
>> but not impossibly so.
>>
>
> Maybe we're working from different assumptions, but I thought the entire
> basis for this discussion is that the project has grown to the point
> where we have more resources than we used to --- and in particular,
> we can find people who don't feel able to fix deep backend bugs, but are
> ready and willing to track bug details and status with a goodly amount
> of cluefulness. If that resource doesn't actually exist, then I fear
> this whole discussion will come to naught. If it does exist, we should
> call upon it.
>
> This is not that far different from the premise upon which you built
> the buildfarm: that there were people out there able to provide machine
> resources and a certain amount of admin time. The resources this
> project requires are not those exactly, but why shouldn't we expect
> that some people will answer the call?
>
>
>

I am not saying there is no work involved. In fact, throughout this
thread I have agreed with you that a tracker that is not given regular
maintenance effort is doomed to fail. But I don't think the level of
effort required is undoable, nor that the cost is too high.

Unlike running buildfarm, this is not largely automatable.

Incidentally, the buildfarm has taken far more of my time and energy
than I originally expected. It has probably been worth it - I doubt I
could have delivered anything else as valuable in its place, but in that
sense the cost to me has been quite high. I hope that by spreading the
load a bit maintenance of a tracker will not be as burdensome to anybody.

cheers

andrew