Suggestion with respect to the Fedora Update System

[Paul Howarth]

"G" wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I got the following mail from Fedora updates. It says "The following
> package has been moved to stable from testing". The Karma value
> corresponding to this package is still zero (mentioned in the below
> thread). Correct me if i am wrong, if the value reaches 3 its moved to
> stable, thats how i understood it.  I gave a comment for that package
> that i am not able to test it because i was not aware what needs to be
> tested for that enhancement.
> 
> Apart from this i ve an other problem. Suggestions and Comments
> Welcome for this problem :) .
> I browse through the Fedora Updates repository to start testing
> packages which are under the fedora testing branch, but for some of
> the packages, i see that its given as an enhancement (like the below
> one) but i am not able to go ahead testing it because it does not
> specifiy whats the enhnacement is about. I did notice that there are
> some bug fixes too made which has got the word "bugfix" but does not
> map to a Bug ID i.e, the Bug ID is not mentioned in the updates. It
> becomes diffficult to test those packages and give appropriate and
> correct feedback.I shouldnt give back a report saying that it works or
> it does not work which might be a wrong test result because i might be
> testing something but the fix would be for something else.
> 
> I would really appreciate if you all could help me with a suggestion
> on this. I went a step ahead by raising a ticket in the bodhi system
> so that we could have a field in the updates system where in when a
> packager uploads the packages, a mandatory field on whats fixed if its
> a bug fix could be stated and if its an enhanement , a small note on
> what the enhancement is. Will this suggestion work ?
> 
> This would really help people testing packages from the bodhi
> repository and thereby make Fedora a real rock solid distro.
> 
> Thanks for reading this . Hope people don't mistake me for this :)

Often the bugs or enhancements come directly from upstream and not as a 
result of tickets in Fedora's bugzilla. Sometimes there's not even an 
entry in the upstream bug tracker either, so it's not always possible to 
provide such references.

Having said that, I see many updates with no explanatory notes to say 
what the bug or enhancement is, and in the case where there's no ticket 
to refer to I think the notes can fill the gap quite well.

Paul.