infrastructure modest proposal

[Les Mikesell]

Kevin Martin wrote:
> 
> FWIW, the 3 layer model is used to great effect in everyday business. 
> First, there's "testing" where the developers get to play to their
> hearts content and, hopefully, get a product to "production" level. 
> Then the product goes to "qa" or "qc" where it "burns in" for awhile
> with other products that may or may not "play nice" with it (aren't
> double quotes wonderous little things!).  If they don't "play nice"
> together then it goes back to testing for more work and then back to
> qa/qc until it all works as planned.  Then, and only then, does it move
> to production.  I understand that Fedora is a bunch of folks doing the
> work on a volunteer basis but that just makes the idea of a qa
> environment that much more useful.

Someone is probably going to claim that rawhide/updates-testing/updates 
provides this 3 layer model for fedora.  It doesn't, because the 
packages roll independently. No one can take qa seriously if it doesn't 
test the exact configurations that are going to exist in production, 
which is impossible with this structure.  If the moves to/from 
updates-testing were batched in all-or-nothing updates, or another layer 
of updates-qa was added for this batch move process, it might actually 
become possible to do meaningful tests with packages in their proposed 
production context.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com