ENVR checking

[Tim Jackson]

Michael Schwendt wrote:

> It used to be run automatically after each Extras push, but when the
> build system moved to koji and bodhi, this feature was killed. Probably
> it was considered unimportant or a source of "spam". That's a problem
> with stuff that isn't backed up or enforced by project leadership. When
> I started to run it manually after some time prior to the next release
> of Fedora, the number of negative voices was overwhelming: Those with
> test updates newer than rawhide complained. Those with F-[n-1] test
> updates newer than F-[n] complained. Those with pending updates in
> bodhi complained. Those who found it helpful stayed silent. From those,
> who didn't understand the private mails they received, only a very few
> asked for an explanation.

OK, well you shouldn't be fighting a lonely battle here. I'm certainly in 
that silent many (majority?). It's easy to make a mistake with versioning 
when we have so many branches and complex situations (base, updates etc.) 
and I'm very grateful when errors are pointed out so that they can be 
fixed. ENVR checking is really important, because aside from other reasons:

a) there's no point in doing all the packaging work we do if half the 
users don't see it because they get stuck on old versions of packages when 
they do upgrades (and let's face it, with such a fast-moving distribution 
that even contributors like myself struggle to keep up with releases, we 
can't expect everyone to be doing fresh installs each time)

b) half-baked systems that don't work properly (due to bad/old versions of 
software after upgrades) just make Fedora look bad.

I've had at least two different F8->F9 upgraded machines end up unbootable 
  after a "yum upgrade", which may or may not be a result of ENVR issues 
but either way it's really, really bad. (Thankfully I know enough to fix 
them, but many other users would have given up and gone away with the 
impression that Fedora trashed their PC.)

However, I'm obviously preaching to the converted. What do we have to do 
to get this run in a regular, official, supported way on the Fedora 
systems and with backup from FPC and whoever in making sure packagers fix 
problems?

Tim