QA process was Re: RPM submission procedure

[Michael K. Johnson]

On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 04:00:29AM -0500, Gene C. wrote:
> 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).

There are many levels of QA.  We don't have to have the same kind of rules
for QA that, say, a proprietary software company does.  I think that package
QA is primarily to make sure that the packaging has not been screwed up,
and secondarily to look for faults in the software itself.

There will always be bugs.  The point isn't to get rid of all bugs before
declaring the software usable.  The point is to avoid disaster while
keeping up with the amazing development speed of open source software....
Open source gives us a better opportunity to fix bugs without waiting
through a whole cycle.

So exactly what needs to be done for QA depends on what has been done
in development.  If a previously OK'ed package has had one minor patch
added to fix a bug, then QA just does not have to be extensive.  If it
is an entirely new version that has had very little upstream testing,
then it needs more.

This seems like common sense to me.  :-)

michaelkjohnson

 "He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book."
 Linux Application Development                     -- Ben Franklin
 http://people.redhat.com/johnsonm/lad/