[Nix-dev] 6 month C4 adoption period

[stewart mackenzie]

I'm the canary in this goldmine, and this canary is dead.

What I'm about to describe is Amdahl's law biting the ass harder of
maintainers as nixpkgs grows in size. It's the reason why maintainers are
rudely closing PRs, it's the reason why maintainers are cutting corners
themselves yet expect super high standards from contributors.

Yes it's bloody annoying having someone who didn't even understand the PR
close it. Having @globin close the PR without a complete understanding and
he voted against C4 in [2], irritated me. Moritz I beg you to answer this
with blood streaming from my eyes, do you think @globin has any incentive
to solve my problem? Instead I get comments like "If you calm down I might
be interested in putting my time into trying to understand why this isn't
affected but I'm quite sure you misinterpret the meaning of lowprio".
That's after me waiting hours of compile time, no sleep for a long time.
Besides, I could have just created another PR to add lowprio back! Notice
eelco saying lowprio is needed yet [1] has landed in mainline. Yes I would
need to see if it actually worked on hydra, but.... I'm the one waiting and
learning! If you guys are not prepared to break apart this forming 'in
crowd' with the C4, then what are your procedures on removing cultivated
bad maintainers, or will you just let this become a systemic problem? I am
NOT implying @globin is a bad actor! This current stressful system will
turn good actors into bad actors.

I now don't care how under pressure you maintainers are... your power
structure dictates it, the very power structure you guys uphold and resist
my attempts at breaking. You could totally alleviate your self chosen
stress by adopting the C4.
Maintainers are becoming grumpy, the workload is higher, I had sympathy now
I do not. Shall I reciprocate with the same level of rudeness I receive
when submitting a patch?

I'm getting frustrated not at any individual, you're all, I'm sure, great
people I can have a good amount of beer with. It's your power structure I'm
rebelling against. It needs to change.

Then to have another PR created [1] by the person who didn't take the time
or energy to even read or understand the C4. Yes I have no patience for
people who do not read or understand something, especially when I've spoken
on the topic multiple times, endeavouring to answer questions politely and
nicely [2], and then to have a  habitual response with the "I'm a stressed
maintainer don't bother me" learned attitude. I will no longer write
volumes (doing it again ... damn) arguing with maintainers who don't want
to read, hence the 1+1=2 response. This Moritz is the straw breaking the
camel's back, a long while ago I noticed this rude behaviour of
maintainers, which is a direct result of the power structure and decided
not to commit or maintain packages on nixpkgs or even "aspire" to become a
nix maintainer. Having people go around running algos on your level of
commitment is such utter and total bullshit.

I get people approaching me out of band suggesting technical solutions to
this problem (regarding nixpkgs maintainers), this isn't a technical
problem it's a people problem. It's becoming a fiefdom, the in crowd,
forgive me, but that annoys me. Maybe I should just stop interacting with
the nix crowd? Would you prefer that? If you'll let me maintain 1, only 1
package on nixpkgs - a nix shell I'm developing. That's it I promise. I
won't touch any other code. (See how mental that is?)

[1] https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/18101/files
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/commit/d4e012780f7eee93f7600d5273edde7470f20c87

[2] https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/17407

[3] https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/18102

Think about it for a second, when has the legal system ever passed laws to
limit it's own power? Passing the C4 will limit even Eelco's power. Imagine
every single maintainer not being able to merge their own commits.

The way lethalman handled this PR of mine is exactly the correct way [3]
except there should have been no dialogue or at least reducing as much
upfront consensus as possible - you can't fight amdahl's law, and it's just
going to get worse the larger nix gets. Indeed, this is exactly what
@globin should have done, cause I would have fixed it if it was broken,
why? Cause that bit of code is in my L1 cache not @globin's. If for example
I broke it and didn't fix it again, revert my commit. Simple.
It's much less trouble on @globin to JUST check a correct patch and merge
it asap.

I repeat, you can't fight amdahl's law, and it's just going to get worse
the larger nix gets.

kr/sjm
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