Refining the update queues/process [Was: Worthless updates]

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 03/03/2010 07:28 AM, Seth Vidal wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, 3 Mar 2010, Kevin Kofler wrote:
>
>> Seth Vidal wrote:
>>> At the risk of complicating the world would it make any sense for us to
>>> have (in increasing order of importance)
>>>
>>> updates-testing
>>> updates
>>> updates-important
>>>
>>> packages that are security or critical go from updates-testing to
>>> updates-important - and that happens as necessary
>>>
>>> all other updates go from updates-testing to updates once a month.
All this would do is causing further bureaucracy and delays in fixing 
"non-security and non-critical" bug fixes and add further complexity to 
repo-deps.

>> And what problem would that solve? All I see is it causes problems for those
>> people who need the updates you don't judge "important".

> And stages non-critical/important updates so our QA team can test and
> check
Please elaborate how the "QA team" is testing perl modules.

So far, I haven't seen any indication of such a team being in existance 
(c.f. dnssec-conf, kernel) nor am I aware of any means for testing such 
perl-modules (perl-modules typically are equipped with a testsuite).

The real testing is performed by Fedora users, them providing feedback 
and maintainers letting user feedback flow back into packages ASAP.

> them over more thoroughly and align testing goals and days to help
> foster and create a more active and involved testing infrastructure.

> This is what we HAVE to do.
Feel free to think so, however can not disagree more.

Instead, we need
* to fix the bugs Fedora packages currently suffers from.
One step into this direction would be FESCO to ban "FIXED 
UPSTREAM/RAWHIDE", such that maintainers can not resort to it.

* people to stop infecting Fedora with premature, immature and 
dysfunctional packages. These packages are the #1 nuissances when 
upgrading between different versions of Fedora.

* automatisms to prevent broken package deps.
These are the nuissances users are facing when coping with updates.

* Fix PackageKit/Fedora's infrastructure (or whereever the cause may be) 
such that PackageKit doesn't demand unnecessary reboots (It currently 
does so).
That said, if you want to delay and bundle package updates: Bundle those 
which require rebooting.

* Encourage users on low bandwidth to use presto - AFAICT, presto repos 
don't get the attention they would need.

* rolling DVD images (say weekly) such that installation-DVD gets more 
frequent testing ...

Or differently: The key to QA would not be bug-fixing, but to prevent 
bugs from entering Fedora - This is where Fedora has deficits.

Ralf