Creation of SIG QA

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

Better late than never. Sorry for the delay.

Am Mittwoch, den 15.03.2006, 13:43 +0100 schrieb
Christian.Iseli at licr.org:
> 
> fedora at leemhuis.info said: 
> > We probably need a small QA sig/group/task-force that pokes maintainers and
> > creates bugs for those things that need fixing... Anyone interested to drive
> > this forward?
> 
> I can try... but I'll need some guidance I guess...
> 
> If you already have a clear idea of what "those things that need fixing" mean, 
> I'd be interested to have your bullet list :-)
> 

Am Donnerstag, den 16.03.2006, 16:26 +0100 schrieb
Christian.Iseli at licr.org: 
> Following on Thorsten gentle prod, I created a QA SIG wiki page:
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SIGs/QA

Okay, here are those ideas that come to my mind right now (I'll probably
forget some things, but I hope to have all the important things):

- Each time close before a new Fedora Core ships do exactly what I and
some others have done in the past weeks for FE5. E.g. look at the repo
for packages that might be orphaned and get them removed. Look out for
packages that were not rebuild after a mass rebuild was announced and
poke maintainers. Look out for packagers that vanished without telling
us.

- File bug reports for the broken deps. Mschwendt posts a nice,
script-generated summary of broken deps to the list now and then, but
that's all afaik. If nothing happened 2 (4? 7?) days after these mails
were send out file a bug for the broken dep.

- Look at the repo for packages that are useless. Example: Look at FE5
repo and sort it by date and just look at the first packages
http://www.fedoraproject.org/extras/5/i386/?C=M;O=A
On top is epydoc-2.1-2.i386.rpm -- seems to be obsoleted by
epydoc-2.1-4.noarch.rpm , but didn't get removed.
Hermes-1.3.3-6.i386.rpm -- not rebuild for 1 1/4 years? Wow.
pyzor-0.4.0-9.fc4.noarch.rpm   -- a package with the disttag "fc4" in
the final FE5 repo? That confusing. Ohh, there are some more of
these :-/
/me stops at this point

- The Review-Guidelines require that bugs are opened for all
ExcludeArchs/ExclusiveArchs to simplify tracking . That should allow
people interested in those arch to step up and help fixing things (I did
this in the past for x86_64 but don't find time for it these days).

- Watch fedora-commit-list for stupid modifications. We have a lot of QA
rules to get a package integrated, but after it is imported nothing is
checked. Yeah, I know that some people watch the list closely. But is
that enough? 

- Check existing packages. A small and quick re-review for obvious
things every two years would be nice. Yeah, that's a lot of work. I
don't think we currently have the manpower to handle that. But we could
try to get a step into that direction with some automatic checks. For
example a simple script that checks if packages contain .la files should
be easy. Also checking for a correct updated path (1.1-5.fc4 in FE4 and
1.1-4.fc5 might break updates) should be easy. There are probably a lot
more check that could be automated.

/me starts to look at
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/PackageStatus
at this point

- "Packages not present in the development repo - We have 44 packages
not available in extras devel or release:" -- well, there are good
reasons for it, but I suspect some of them don't have one. Bug-Reports
to poke maintainers probably would be a good idea for those.

- "Packages not present in the development repo - We have 10 packages
not available in extras devel but present in release:" Are there good
reasons for it besides packages being orphaned and removed from the
repo? I don't think so! [Note, they are gone this week -- they were
there last week:
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/PackageStatus?action=recall&rev=6 ] 

- "Packages that have not yet completed review - We have 3 packages
which have not yet been FE-APPROVE'd...". WTF -- why that? 

- "Packages missing in owners.list" -- needs fixing, too

- "Orphaned packages present in the development repo" -- should be
removed now at the beginning of a devel cycle. Even if other packages
depend on them IMHO. This forces other packages to find solutions. 

- "Potential problems - We have 3 accepted, closed packages where I'm
unable to find the package in the development repo:". Asking in the link
bug reports why that's the case?

- "Potential problems - We have 5 accepted, closed packages where I'm
unable to find the package in the owners file:" Huh?

- "Inactivity notice -- We have 7 accepted, open package reviews older
than 4 weeks". Interesting. Reask in the bug. If packagers don#t show up
the approval should be revoked IMHO if there is no good excuse for that
behavior.

- There are multiple other section were opening bugs or asking around in
the bugs might get things to speed. I'll stop citing them now and only
will mention the most important ones.

- "We have 6 closed tickets still blocking FE-NEW"

- "Packages in CVS with no entry in the owners.list"

- "Packages appearing in Core but still present in CVS devel"

Yeah, I know, it's a lot of work. :-/ Especially in the beginning. But
at least some of the work really should be done IMHO. That would improve
the quality of Fedora Extras in the long term and IMHO.

CU
thl
-- 
Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora at leemhuis.info>