Submission process (was: Re: Self-Introduction: Michael Tiemann)

[Rudi Chiarito]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2004 at 05:53:32PM +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> And no one discusses any details, so it is not known what you would like
> the "streamlined submission process" to look like.

Eric Raymond discussed it eloquently a few months ago and I also stated
it in my first email today: the absence of a more automated process. At
least that's _my_ own take on it.

> system. Packagers might find that filling in bugzilla forms is an extra
> burden. Some might want to upload their packages into an /incoming FTP
> directory and be done. But actually, too many submitted packages either

Again, Eric already explained that Bugzilla forces packagers/developers
to enter data that is already available to a simple shell script.  Plus,
it can get awkward if you need to submit one of those programs that rely
on a bunch of Perl modules (and, in turn, the latter's dependencies).

I'll admit that some of the trouble is more imaginary than real: five
minutes spent copying, pasting and double-checking can easily seem like
an eternity, when it's actually a mere five minutes... but why waste
them, if it can be avoided?

Here's Eric's page on his proposed solution:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/fedora-submit/

> team would be overloaded with failed build attempts (there is no automated
> build system yet) or many package bugs would enter the repository.

This brings back the need for, I think, tools like mach. Should mach be
part of FC? Should it be sanctioned as a required tool for packagers?
On the other hand, should the inclusion and endorsement, perhaps, be
postponed until mach can be made to use yum rather than apt-rpm?
Documentation is good, but having the tools available out of the box
further reduces any inertia (mine included).

-- 
Rudi