Summary from yesterdays (mini) FESCo meeting

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 12/30/06, Michael Schwendt <bugs.michael at gmx.net> wrote:
> Who cares? Three months in the future you should still be able to spot
> questionable packaging techniques which require a closer look.

Who cares? I care, and I since I've no authority to speak for anyone
else, that should suffice. I want to make sure I'm making my best
effort that I am watching out for the specific things which the people
in the packaging committee have reached a consensus on as best
practises.  Even the nit-picky details over things like what vendor
string to use in a desktop file.  I frankly don't give a flying flip
personally about details like that, but I value the packaging
committees efforts, and I have no desire to de-value the time they
spend worrying about the details by simply ignoring the policy
guidance amendments they spin up.

All I am saying is that there is room for improvement in communicating
evolving guidance. A checklist with effective-as-of timestamping is
just one implementation mechanism, that would help me keep better
track of policy changes. The key idea there isn't checklist per-say,
but the timestamping of sections of the guidance at some reasonable
level of granularity, so that I can quickly find out what's been
updated since the last time I submitted a package or ran a review. If
members of the packaging committee would like to see packagers and
reviewers, like myself, make submissions and reviews  with the most
up-to-date guidance in mind, then it would behoove them to find a way
to encapsulate granular chronologically sorted effective-as-off
timestamping of specific policy sections.

> All that matters is whether a package contains anything nasty prior to approval or
> after approval (when the packager can reintroduce severe packaging bugs
> unless this is noticed via commits-list).

If that is all that matters to you, then fine, I'm not mandating or
asking you to do more than the minimum requirements. All I am asking
is for the people who are writing the more detailed best practises
guidance work with me, and anyone else who wants to follow the best
practise guidance, so we can more easily keep up with the evolution of
the guidance as individual items evolve.

-jef