Packaging quality, assistance.

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Wed, 2007-05-09 at 12:25 -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-05-09 at 18:52 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > > > Wrt. "collaboration with RH" and "unifying Core and Extra"s on packaging
> > > > work actually nothing much has happened. Packages which have been under
> > > > RH control still are under RH control and what had been under "community
> > > > maintenance" still also is. 

> > I have not complained about nobody having done anything on this (IMO:
> > unusable flagged review stuff causing the bugzilla list to be flooded,
> > I did not complain about the web-pages going on and off almost daily.
> 
> Um... wtf does that have to do with Red Hat and/or the Core/Extras
> merge?

I and others had initially asked and complained. Yet, the implementor
(@RH) continued ignoring all concerns and complaints. Now reviewer are
being confronted with the mess he has caused (The flagged crap ca.
doubled the list traffic and made review close to unreadable).

> > I did not complain about plague suddenly going offline for devel and
> > being replaced with something largely undocumented called koji.
> 
> Do you have difficulties with koji or ..?
Yes, I had. 

Publicly visible symptoms were me upgrading packages for FC < 7 but not
doing so for FC7. ATM you are seeing broken EVRs.

I wasted several hours spread over several days on it, because 
* the koji package doesn't ship with any usable docs, and a google
search did not return much useful info either.
* at some point the buildserver did not respond, 
* when it finally responded (a few days later) it referred to an invalid
URL.
* when this URL finally was valid (yet another day later), it didn't
contain useful information.
* when this URL contained some useful info (yet several hours later,
some time earlier this week), koji started to work.

>   Seriously, if there are
> issues here they can be addressed.
Do you want me to bugzilla PR's?

> > I did not complain about all @RH's missing at the FPC meeting yesterday
> > because (as it had leaked through other channels) them having been at
> > the "RedHat summit". 
> 
> People have day jobs...  I miss FESCo meetings because of mine... should
> I be kicked off of it?
Other people inform their fellow committee members in advance if they
know not to be able to join a meeting. To me this is a matter of
fairness and politeness. 

> And I'm pretty sure it wasn't "leaked through other channels". 
It did - It was Rex who mentioned it as a side-note on some mailing list
(Don't recall which), which made me aware about the "Red Hat Summit".

> > I did not complain about the merger "Freezing former Extras" (A
> > regression in comparison to the pre-merger situation), ...
> 
> "regression".  I disagree.  Extras had no structure.
It had: Rolling package releases under continuous development, with "FC
releases" as "snapshots".

>   Did it work for
> the most part?  Sure.  But then again, there were never Extras packages
> being included in ISO spins, etc.  Things like this are what I'm talking
> about when I say it's a two way street.
Exactly. An IMO superior approach would have been to branch FC8 at the
same time the DVD freeze took place and to push subsequent FC7 builts to
"updates".

> > Now accuse me to be impatient again ;)
> 
> It's not your patience that irks me.  It's your insistence upon _making_
> this a Red Hat versus community fight.
Because I perceive it as such. Actually as a community contributor I
don't see any actual improvements over the time before the merger:
"Annonymous circles" drawing questionable decisions from a very
RH-centric view, causing many hick-ups and disturbing irritations on the
community side.

> > >   But
> > > your claims that it's "Red Hat vs. the community" are simply not true.
> > Ask yourselves: Who decides on Core packages? @RH
> 
> Um... because Core _just_ got merged and we're in the middle of trying
> to get a release out the door...
RH has had many months if not years to prepare their employees for it.

> > Example: The perl-packaging split, inclusion of non-free firmware
> > packages, @RH's reactions on reviews, etc.
> 
> non-free firmware went to the Board.  There are non-Red Hat people on
> the Board.
Exactly this is the point: "I perceive RH as labeling decisions as
community decisions, which have actually been taken @RH or at least in
their close vicinity". Remember, none of the Fedora leadership circles
represents the community. FESCo once did, but even this doesn't apply
anymore.

Ralf