/bin/sh: Argument list too long

I tried building binutils-2.25 in a qemu chroot and I got the following error during the build process:

/bin/sh: Argument list too long

Google wasn’t helpful. So I looked at the code for qemu-2.2.0, which is where my static qemu binary comes from. At some point I stumbled on this line in linux-user/qemu.h:

#define MAX_ARG_PAGES 33

I changed that 33 to a 64, rebuilt, replaced the approriate static binary in my chroot, and the error went away.

Google Summer of Code 2015

TL;DR: Gentoo not selected for GSoC 2015 ‘to make way for new orgs”. All is not lost: some Gentoo projects will be available within other organizations.

As you may have already noted, the Gentoo Foundation was not selected as a mentoring organization for GSoC 2015. Many immediately started to speculate why that happened.

Today I had an opportunity to talk (on irc) to Carol Smith, from Google’s Open Source Programs Office. I asked her why we had been rejected, if they had seen any issue with our application to GSoC, and if she had comments about it. Here’s what her answer was:

yeah, i’m sorry that this is going to be disappointing
but this was just us trying to make way for new orgs this year 🙁
i don’t see anything wrong with your ideas page or application, it looks good

Then I asked her the following:

one discussion we had after our rejection is if we should keep focusing on doing GSoC to attract contributors as we’ve been doing, or focus more on having projects actually be implemented, and how much you cared about it

To which she replied:

well, i’ll say that wasn’t a factor in this rejection
having said that, we in general like to see more new developers instead of the same ones year over year
we’d prefer gsoc was used to attract new members of the community
but like i said, that wasn’t a factor in your case

It’s pretty clear we haven’t done anything wrong, and that they like what we do and the way we do it. Which doesn’t mean we can’t improve, by the way. I know Carol well enough to be sure she was not dodging my questions to politely brush me aside. She says things as they are.

So, what happened then? First, the overall number of accepted organizations went down roughly 30% compared to last year. The immediate thought which comes to mind is “budget cut”. Maybe. But the team who organizes GSoC is largely the same year over year. You can’t indefinitely grow an organization at constant manpower. And last year was big.

Second, and probably the main reason why we were rejected is that this year small and/or newer organizations were favored. This was explicitly said by Carol (and I believe others) multiple times. I’m sure some of you will argue that this isn’t a good idea, but the fact is it’s their program and they run it the way they want. I will certainly not blame them. This does not mean no large organizations were selected, but that tough choices had to be made among them.

In my opinion, Carol’s lack of words to explain why we were not selected meant “not bad but not good enough”. The playing field is improving every year. We surely felt a little too confident and now have to step up our game. I have ideas for next year, these will be discussed in due time.

In the meantime, some Gentoo projects will be available within other organizations. I will not talk about what hasn’t been announced yet, but I can certainly make this one official:
glee: Gentoo-based Linux appliances on Minnowboard
If you’re interested, feel free to contact me directly.