An introduction of the new cheerleader...

Michel Alexandre Salim salimma1 at yahoo.co.uk
Tue Jan 27 12:07:01 UTC 2004


On Mon, 2004-01-26 at 20:21, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> There is one particular thing I don't understand. Once an arbitrary
> repository contains a new package, people don't hesitate to download and
> install it. When it's broken or not as usable as expected, they either
> downgrade or try the next repository (this experience is based on comments
> seen in message boards), repeating this procedure regularly. But when a
> package of the same software is in a public queue of packages to be
> reviewed before they get published, people avoid such packages like the
> plague and don't give the packages a try and don't leave feedback. I think
> the community can do better than that. But the Fedora community has a long
> road to take to realize that--like with the Debian GNU/Linux project--it's
> better to spend a combined effort on a primary source of reliable and
> maintained packages than to either want everything maintained by Red Hat
> in "Fedora Core" or to keep an excessive list of repositories maintained
> by individuals and live with interoperability problems.
> 
Perhaps most users do not like to do the hard work of committing to QA a
package without seeing it in action first?

If the CPU cycles could be spared to autobuild newly-submitted packages
(under a chroot, and perhaps with a system that automatically notifies
the packager when a build fails and ban him/her from further submitting
new packages if X number of unbuildable packages are left unfixed),
would-be testers could try out packages they are interested in, *then*
review the spec.

This would have the added benefit of being certain that the package
someone reviews has been known to compile in a pristine Fedora
(+updates) environment. Otherwise there is the risk that a package would
not build on someone's machine and that someone blamed the packaging.

My 2 cents,

- Michel





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