Updates System

[Hans de Goede]

Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-05-16 at 00:32 -0400, Warren Togami wrote:
>> Today Core updates happen using this update system.  It is a smooth and 
>> formal process.
> 0) maintainer tests package's  functionality.
>> 1) Maintainer checks changes into CVS branch.
>> 2) Maintainer builds.
>> 3) Maintainer tests that build.
>> 4) Maintainer fills out the form with the N-V-R, optional security 
>> (yes/no), optional Bug numbers fixed, and some fills in some details of 
>> what the update is about, then chooses updates or updates-testing.
>> 5) Submit, where security and/or rel-eng team pushes it through.
> 
> Now where in this scheme is Will Woods? I don't see him testing
> anything. All I see is more bureaucracy and more manual steps than
> before.
> 

As someone who maintains 125+ packages, I would like to show some support for 
Ralf's point of view. I'm very proud of the fact that I not only maintain 125+ 
packages, but also have 0 yes _zero_ open bugs against them (most of the time),
call me Hans "zero open bugs" de Goede if you want :)

However sometime real life intervenes and I cannot work on Fedora stuff for a 
couple of days, when I then return to doing Fedora work, murphy kicks in and I 
all off a sudden have 5 issues requesting my attention (for some reason issues 
always come in bumps instead of as a steady trickle), usually resulting in me 
pushing 4 a 5 bugfix updates in a single day.

Thus I would like to voice my concern over the web-form part of this. 
Preferably this would be handled in the makefile and when typing "make build" 
for a non-devel branch my $EDITOR would get launched opening a pre-filled 
template update anouncement, where I can add the necessary bits, and then upon 
saving this gets automatically entered into the updates system.

Basicly every step added to the process is one too much, thus we should try to 
not add any steps if not absolutely necessary. Don't get me wrong, I'm not 
against using a proper updates scheme instead of the rolling model of extras 
(although that always worked well for me). But the whole workflow should be 
made as smooth as possible, as smooth as baby's buttocks preferably.

Regards,

Hans