Testing of updates

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sat, 15 May 2010 05:40:27 -0400, Matt wrote:

> > Is the +1 the result of substantial
> > testing or just a +1 to get the new "adventurous" stuff, which makes
> > Fedora less boring?
> 
> Yes, a standard for +1 karma would be helpful.  But even before that, we
> need a standard (or at least an understanding shared by maintainers) for
> how much total testing an update needs before being pushed to stable.

It should be up to the maintainer to decide that.

_Unless_ there is more "global interest" in the package.
From the distributor's point of view (for example, the CRITPATH package
set). Or from the community's point of view. Then it's up to those extra
people to contribute the testing if they want to apply special rules to a
package. For the community that means it's time to build a team that takes
care of the package and put tools to good use -- and as soon as there is a
team, they can decide on minimum karma or mandatory tests.

As long as nobody steps up and says "I want to influence the quality of
this package and its updates", it's only the package maintainer to run the
whole show ... including mistakes (such as not noticing a problem upstream
hasn't noticed either).

And there are bug-fix updates, which don't need any special testing,
because the maintainer knows that the applied fix is fine. How likely is
it that only the x86_64 builder damaged a byte in the build that makes
the software crash in a single function which used to work before? ;)

> I have been using fedora-easy-karma for a few weeks now, and I typically
> give a +1 after successfully performing my most common workflow(s) using
> the package.  The fact that the package works at all in my environment
> is valuable information, but it's still important to ensure that the
> package gets the desired total amount of testing.

I've given up using it and only run it sporadically to see what test
updates are still installed. Too many of the update tickets refer to
specific problems I haven't run into.

> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/rsync-3.0.7-2.fc12

Disappointing to see that. :-/