old_testing_critpath notifications

[Till Maas]

On Wed, Dec 01, 2010 at 02:17:32PM -0800, Adam Williamson wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-12-01 at 16:55 -0500, Doug Ledford wrote:
> 
> > The comparison is 100% fair because it points out the fundamental
> > problem with the current policy: if you don't have a paid staff of
> > testers to make sure testing is done in a timely fashion, then you have
> > absolutely no business gating updates on a testing staff that doesn't
> > exist.  It's nice in theory to think we can force testing of updates
> > prior to their release, but if the testing staff simply isn't there,
> > then you aren't improving the product, you're just stopping progress.
> 
> The gating is not on 'a testing staff'. The gating is on *testing*.
> 
> I want to say again that I'm not particularly wedded to the current
> policy and I don't mind at all if it changes, but I think we need to be
> careful of the mindset that says 'we can't enforce any standards in
> Fedora because it's a volunteer project so we must just accept what
> people are willing to give us'.
> 
> Even though packaging in Fedora is a volunteer process, we still have
> fairly rigorous packaging guidelines and a review process. We don't just
> accept any package someone turns up and submits. i.e., we're enforcing
> standards of quality, despite this being an entirely volunteer effort
> and no-one being compelled to show up and provide packages of a
> particular quality.

But this enforcement also only happens with respect to the currently
limited manpower, afaik not all merge reviews have been finished and
packages are usually not re-reviewed when packaging guidelines change.

> The concept of having a policy requiring updates to be tested before
> they're issued is really no different. I think one point where we've

A big difference is that the testing process is very fuzzy and there is
not much tooling that helps people to test unknown software. E.g. if I
want to review a package, there are several checklists I could use and
there are guidelines that I can easily follow to perform a review. But
testing software is not that easy.
Also it is not possible to partly test updates and share the effort.
E.g. in reviews everyone can comment to get the package in shape if it
is not.

Regards
Till
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