The community has lost control... (Was: Re: Don't put new packages through updates-testing)

[Hans de Goede]

Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Sunday 03 June 2007 05:32:40 Patrice Dumas wrote:
>> Of course, but the right way to handle that is not by coming in the way
>> of those who really know better, but by educating those who think they
>> know better.
> 
> History has proven to me that this is a losing battle.  There is always 
> somebody or some group of somebodies that "just didn't notice" that there was 
> a freeze on, or "just didn't think" that their change would disrupt large 
> sets of packages.
> 
> Look, I don't even come close to thinking that the workflow we used for Fedora 
> 7 freeze was ideal.  Far from it.  I stated as much when I posted about it.  
> However it was a workflow that many current maintainers (former Core ones) 
> were familiar with, and one that I was confident would allow Fedora 7 to be 
> released without too much trouble.  Now I'm more than willing to discuss new 
> and better ways of managing freezes with these new tools at our disposal.  By 
> no means is the Fedora 7 way the way of the future.  Lets have a series of 
> rel-eng meetings with anybody who wants to come along to discuss better ways 
> of handling freezes, and report our proposals to FESCO for ratification.  We 
> meet every Monday.  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ReleaseEngineering
> 

I'm not so sure all the noise is about the freeze procedure, I for one was 
quite happy with the freeze procedure (no complaints there). My problems are 
with the lengthy updates procedure, as we can see it shaping up through bodhi.

I think a good start would be for rel-eng to actually write down how they want 
this to work and why (without taking body into account please, first lets write 
a piece how this would ideally look).

So far I have seen no policy with regards to updates just a tool which involves 
lots of additional steps, without any policy giving that tool a right of 
existence, its like creating a police force without first creating the laws 
which they should uphold.

So please write a documents how updates should be managed / release engineered 
(and the current bodhi FAQ-ish document is not that IMHO), get this document 
discussed and ratified, and then see what this means for bodhi in the long run.

For now we can use bodhi as is, as we need something, but for the future I 
would like to see a proper decission making process surrounding updates policy, 
with all the steps taken in the right order (and thus with the tool 
implementing the policy coming last, after the policy has first been written on 
paper, discussed and approved by the appropriate gremia).

Regards,

Hans