RFC: automated broken deps reports

[Michael Schwendt]

As discussed briefly in the last meeting of FESCO, there are a few open
questions with regard to running a script that does automated checking of
broken dependencies in Fedora Extras:

* How often to run it?

Daily? After every push of new builds for Fedora Extras? If Rawhide breaks
something how do we become aware of that in time? That is, do we know
exactly when new packages are pushed in Rawhide so the script would not
run before that? Does it matter? The next run a day later would catch
broken deps. Do we, at Fedora Extras, have big interest in knowing quickly
when changes in Rawhide break anything in Extras? Reports of broken
packages are not worthwhile if rebuilds or fixes won't happen until
packagers track and "support" Rawhide or unless a special team at Fedora
Extras takes over doing the rebuilds for devel.

* Whether to mail a summary of all broken dependencies to
  fedora-extras-list?

So far, during the few public test-runs, a packager received a summary of
all broken dependencies for all his broken packages in a single mail. What
format should a complete summary, which is posted to fedora-extras-list,
have, so it would be useful and readable? Maybe

  package name   version   repository   e-mail
or
  srcrpm name   repository   e-mail
or
  package name   version

sorted by name or sorted by e-mail and grouped by arch? With the full
summary at the bottom? Ideas? The complete list of broken packages in
Fedora Extras Development is not short. Additionally, if reports for FE3,
FE4 and FE Development were squeezed into the same mail, that would
decrease readability even more. Create individuals mails for FE3/FE4/FE5?
(that almost sounds like it could be merged with the "new packages"
report)

* How often to mail the packager?

Would it be considered an annoyance to mail the packager daily because the
script is run every day? Would it be enough to mail once then not repeat
the reports for 7-14 days or unless the src.rpm file name changes?

[...]

The current scripts and their working directory can be found here
for anybody who likes to take a look:
http://home.arcor.de/ms2002sep/tmp/repoclosure-modified-20060208.tgz