Refining the update queues/process [Was: Worthless updates]

[Seth Vidal]

On Wed, 3 Mar 2010, Kevin Kofler wrote:

> Seth Vidal wrote:
>> And stages non-critical/important updates so our QA team can test and
>> check them over more thoroughly and align testing goals and days to help
>> foster and create a more active and involved testing infrastructure.
>
> Congratulations for that sentence full of technical jargon designed to hide
> its true meaning.

If you can't understand it, perhaps you should reconsider your role on a 
technical committee like fesco.


> * Who decides what updates are or are not "critical" or "important"? The
> criteria you brought up earlier in this thread (only security as critical)
> are way too restrictive, what about a fix for a regression?

Me and the rest of fesco. Oh and I didn't say only security as critical. 
That's why I mentioned them separately.

> * Why would the QA team be better off having to test everything at the same
> time for the same deadline than the current flow of testing updates?

B/c we can call a moratorium a week before and have regular, scheduled 
test days.

> * Why would we want to "align" our "testing goals and days"? It makes more
> sense to spread them so people can test one thing at a time!

Not for purposes of staging test events.

> * So would this really "create a more active and involved testing
> infrastructure"? IMHO it'd just create more painful deadlines, as if the
> releases weren't enough of a painpoint already.

Alternatively it makes things better for those folks who like to test 
their software before releasing it.


> * And most importantly, even if we were to accept that it could lead to
> better QA (which I doubt), would it really be worth making users wait a FULL
> MONTH for their updates and forcing them to pull a HUGE update in one single
> transaction rather than spread over time? IMHO, HELL NO!

It will mean regularity and predictability. It will let users and admins 
alike know when they can expect new things. Doing it once a month means 
that they only need to cope with 13 of these per fedora release.

Predictability means you can plan for effectively.



>
> Why? Because you say so? We aren't doing that stuff now and things are
> working just fine, thank you very much! We don't HAVE to change anything at
> all!

We will be doing it or something very much like it. Good luck with your 
fight.

-sv