Re: QA process was Re: RPM submission procedure
On Friday 09 January 2004 19:22, Michael K. Johnson wrote:
On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 02:42:38PM -0500, Gene C. wrote:
> I am hopeful that the Red Hat folks will speak on the Fedora Extras
> subject soon (their lack of comment is very noticeable). Some of this
> discussion
Well, I have two reasons for not commenting:
o We don't have the CVS server up yet, and I believe that action
should come before talk here.
o I'm doing a lot of listening. Overall it is important to me that
it not be so hard or confusing to do that people don't do it. I
think that the rules can be simple and exceptions worked out on
an individual basis; that's what we've done internally. We need
rules, with rationale, better codified -- which is one thing we
liked about fedora.us in the first place -- but I think that we
need to make sure that people aren't put off too much by the
rules we have, and I think that I've got more listening to do
before I speak.
Great! This sounds reasonable.
I am a bit disturbed by some of this discussion and the egos that are
expressed ... it seems like there is a lot of not-invented-here stuff. Right
now I believe that ESR (and the 40 packages he maintains) has been definitely
alienated by this discussion.
I really like Alex's bleeding/testing/good/stable classification of packages.
It should be easy to get packages into the bleeding or testing categories but
to get into either good or stable should require lots more QA. By QA I mean
TESTING by lots of people ... not code reviews by a couple of "experts". My
experience is that very subtle bugs (or intentional compromises) can fool
even experts who have access to source code but lots of testing (running the
software) by lots of people can reveal that the software does have problems
(even if they cannot point to specific causes). Your do not get lots of
testing if the package is not "available".
I am also seeing QA requirements well beyond what Red Hat does internally
(from my perspective) and what I believe is reasonable. While I believe that
some QA rules are needed, lets make them realistic ... lots of rules about
package format are reasonable but the quality of the code in the package will
only be discovered through testing (actually running the software).
As I see it, a lot of the Extras (fedora.us) packages are more like the gftp
package rather than the kernel, gcc, or glibc which need lots of testing
before becoming stable. For gftp, Red Hat has taken the software package
from upstream and then packaged it for Red Hat / Fedora Core making sure that
it puts stuff into the correct directories, etc. However, the Red Hat folks
do not make sure that the software is working as it should ... that is an
upstream responsibility. The 2.0.14 version of gftp which is part of FC-1
has problems with http. I worked with the upstream maintainer/developer to
fix these problems and most of the fixes are in 2.0.16 (with the remainder in
CVS). While there is no gftp update for FC1, 2.0.16 is available in rawhide
(development) for those with the need.
IMHO, the objective for Extras should be for a set of packages which do not
conflict with anything in Core (or other Extras packages) and which have a
classification which reflects actual user experience with that software. The
Extras process should honor and promote this objective.
--
Gene