Re: Guile & Fesco requiring package maintenance work (was: Re: guile22 -> gnutls -> lots of virt packages)
On Wed, Jul 7, 2021 at 10:22 AM Ben Cotton <bcotton(a)redhat.com> wrote:
On Wed, Jul 7, 2021 at 9:38 AM Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange(a)redhat.com> wrote:
>
> I wonder if the process we're following (as it is defined today)
> is actually beneficial for self-contained changes ? Did having a
> vote which rejected the change actually improve Fedora, or was
> it just busy work that is better eliminated in the common/simple
> case ?
>
I've given a lot of thought to an "announcement-only Change" path in
the last three years. There are definitely cases where increased
visibility would help (particularly in the release notes and release
announcement that Matthew writes). There are a few reasons I haven't
done anything with that yet:
* I don't think it would reduce the overhead much. The FESCo vote is
generally no burden on the Change owner. The rest of the process would
still be in place, so I doubt we'd see any meaningful increase in use
of the process.
* Escalating to "needs a vote" becomes messy. Is there a magic phrase
that needs to be said? That's a burden on the community who now have
to remember to say the right words. It also leaves us open to me
missing the use of the magic phrase. If we don't have a magic phrase,
then someone may think they've objected sufficiently to a proposal and
then being surprised when it gets auto-approved.
* It adds another path to the Changes process. Ideally, changes to the
process should simplify, not add more complexity.
I'm definitely open to changes to the Changes process. I'm just not
sure this specific approach is necessary. The issue we're discussing
is rare—I don't recall another case like it in the three years I've
been in this role—and I'm generally reluctant to change processes to
address edge cases.
> The announcement of the change on this list resulted in minimal
> discussion and no show stopper objections. The points raised in
> the FESCo meeting could have just been discussion in the change
> announcement email thread. Did we actually need an interactive
> meeting for it at a specific time where only a tiny set of people
> are actually present to participate ?
>
It wouldn't have even come up in a meeting except there were a couple
of FESCo members opposed to it. If we're going to change processes,
perhaps the better change is to explicitly invite people to the
meeting when their Change proposal is on the agenda.
I assumed we already did this. That's why I made sure to remind the
co-owners of my Changes about it. If we don't, that's definitely a
failure that we should fix.
--
真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!