Do we want extras/testing/{4, 5} repos (was Re: Packaging review guidelines clarification)

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

Am Sonntag, den 19.02.2006, 05:47 +0100 schrieb Ralf Corsepius:
> On Sat, 2006-02-18 at 18:54 -0500, Dan Williams wrote:
> > On Sat, 2006-02-18 at 14:28 -0500, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> > > On 2/18/06, Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora at leemhuis.info> wrote:
> > > > I know, it doesn't work to well with update-testing in core -- but it's
> > > > IMHO better then no testing at all.
> > > 
> > > If this policy goes in I'd want an established  loophole that allows
> > > hot fix updates to fix brokenness that made it through the "testing"
> > > timeout without comment and not just security updates.
> > 
> > So this is appearing to get more and more complicated.  I'm not sure
> > adding more process onto this is the best thing; more process is (a)
> > confusing and (b) a damper on participation.
> I agree with your concerns and do not see much benefits.
> 
> Why can't we have a maintainer must give explicit clearance to release a
> successfully built package policy instead of automatically releasing a
> package?
> 
> That would mean, a successfully built package would end up in a
> publically accessible repo (or directory), but maintainers would have to
> explicitly give clearance for a package to be pushed to the official FE
> repos.

We did this in fedora.us -- it worked, but didn't worked too well IMHO.
Some packages stayed in the "pending" repo for weeks or even months
because nobody checked them. This is probably even more process then a
testing-repo and adds more bureaucracy for the maintainer; so it
probably (a) confusing and (b) a damper on participation.

A defined testing repo with a automatic move to the public trees could
have the benefit that (a) multiple people can check the package easily
(just enable extras-testing, they get the packages with the next yum
update), (b) a package might be checked on multiple archs this way and
(c) it will be pushed even if the maintainer does nothing.

> >   Though we don't want crap
> > packages getting through, is the situation all that bad now?
> Not "that bad", but definitely improvable.

Agreed.
-- 
Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora at leemhuis.info>