QA-process for new packages

[Michael Schwendt]

On Thu, 30 Sep 2004 19:26:37 +0200, Silke Reimer wrote:

> Some time ago I submitted a few packages on fedora.us. One of them
> (gdal, Bug #1964) got lots of comments so I rebuilt the package and
> announced it today. Due to several reasons it took me some time to
> rebuild the package and meanwhile I have been set as owner of the
> bug (and of all my other bugs (#1965, #2000 and #2001) as well).

The assignment of package request tickets to package owners has been
announced and explained on this list around two weeks ago.
 
> Since I am not member of the QA team

Who said that? 

You _are_ a member of the QA team. The community does QA on packages
in the queue. That's pre-release QA. Other members of the community do
post-release QA and submit bug reports when they find something in
the published packages.

> I don't really understand this
> action. I thought that people that are new to fedora can submit
> packages thus being submitter of a bug. Afterwards the QA team
> assigns someone to do the quality assurance and the submitter will
> have to fix the package if there are problems.

There's no such system. Doing QA on new packages and package updates
is done by volunteers. And they are not assigned packages to QA, but
they choose interesting submissions themselves. This system is flawed.
Because if I reviewed and approved 200 different new packages, I would
need to assure that any future update requests for those 200 packages
are QA'ed, too, until the package developer reaches "trusted" status.

So, what I've been doing recently is to pick packages from new
contributors and give them the chance to get a package published. In
return, however, I'd like to see that they engage in QA and help other
contributors. I've counted more than 60 different names in the queue,
so theoretically, there are enough different people to choose from.
Further, I monitor the REVIEWED queue, and I take a look at older
package requests from the trusted developers, too, because they don't
need QA for updates.

> So, my question is: Did I misunderstand the process? And what should
> I do to ensure that a QA team member might look at my packages? Or
> is this perhaps the normal process and I don't have to do anything
> at all?
> 
> Thanks for all explanation (or some hints to any documention [1]),
> 
> 	Silke
> 
> [1] Yes, I already read: http://www.fedora.us/wiki/PackageSubmissionQAPolicy

The first paragraph here,

  http://www.fedora.us/wiki/PackageSubmissionQAPolicy#review

contains an important piece of information:

  [...] encourage other packagers to thoroughly check your package by
  doing a good job in QA testing of their package. [...]


Might be or might not be that all this changes when the merger with
official Fedora Extras is complete. But again, according to the
package submission and QA policy at fedora.us, it doesn't take much to
get a package published...

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