QA process was Re: RPM submission procedure

[Michael Schwendt]

On Fri, 9 Jan 2004 11:54:51 +0200 (EET), Panu Matilainen wrote:

> > On Thu, 08 Jan 2004 19:56:40 -0600, Timothy John Giese wrote:
> > 
> > > On the other hand, I feel deterred from reviewing packages.  I am new, 
> > > so I am not a "trusted" developer.  In order for a package to be 
> > > published, it must be approved by 1 trusted developer or 2 untrusted 
>                                                          ^^^^
> > > developers. 
> > 
> > I think it's "OR": 2 untrusted developers OR 1 trusted developer.
> 
> That's what Timothy said :)

*Ooops* :)

> The fact that you need two such 
> users outside of "trusted developers" to get the package *anywhere* 
> doesn't do much to encourage people to do QA because it feels like totally 
> wasted effort since the package isn't still moving. 

But if the first reviewer has done most of the work already, a second
review can be like a piece of cake. Or is everyone waiting for someone
else to be the early bird?

With regard the notion of "untrusted/trusted developers", I favour the
concept of giving "untrusted developers" the chance to take responsibility
early by relying on their review. That means, if there's a package request
ticket with a PUBLISH vote, I assume the stuff has been reviewed actually,
so let's apply some of the mandatory sanity checks only, skim over the
rest and get it published, taking the first "untrusted" review into
account.  Heck, if that first review was half-hearted, there's still the
PENDING step, and the packager shouldn't "sleep" either and be somewhat
familiar with a package, too, before it is approved.

*Sometimes* the packager does most of the QA already, anyway.

> I've been lobbying lowering the entry bar to testing/unstable for a while
> now... Stable repository should IMHO remain basically as it is, eg you
> can't get your package there until it's seen a full QA review under
> current rules. However allowing just one "untrusted" developer QA review
> to get package into testing or unstable would at least give people the
> feeling that their effort is valuable and actually helps. 

Bears the problem that people would be entirely satisfied with getting
their packages published in testing/unstable easily and don't care to get
them into "stable". It shouldn't end like RHContrib, but it would be
worth a try: +1

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