old_testing_critpath notifications

[Michael Schwendt]

On Mon, 29 Nov 2010 16:11:37 +0000 (UTC), Petr wrote:

> On 2010-11-29, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> > On 11/29/2010 08:04 PM, Petr Pisar wrote:
> >> I do not get the idea why I should filter some irrelevant mails if
> >> better is to not sent them. Especially if I cannot solve the subject of
> >> the mail.

Well, rest assured that there are members in the proventesters group, who
ignore/filter those nag mails, too. They are not messages you'd like to
process repeatedly. F-12 is a sinking ship, F-13 is being abandoned by
more users, because F-14 is current.

> >> Yeah, the subject is somobody does not did his job. I cannot
> >> imagine the knowledge would help me in my packager duties.
> >
> > I am sorry but "somebody does not did his job"?  It is not the "job" of
> > anyone to test packages for you.  They are merely helping out and we
> > will get more help if we express gratitude instead of a sense of
> > entitlement. 
> >
> I do not accuse anybody not duing his job. I just complain the mails are
> absolutly irrelevant from point of view of package maintainer who pushed
> the package.

There are other messages sent by bodhi, which are "irrelevant" and just
noise. All testers, who have left a comment, receive the notification that
an update is 7 days old. And they receive that notification repeatedly as
long as the maintainer forgets to push the package to stable.

> You can replace the `job' with `expected duty' or `role'.

That point of view is too demanding. Testing every critpath update,
including updates for old dists, is not anything like a duty for testers
or proventesters. For *any* tester who wants to help, even if only
occasionally, joining the proventesters group has become a necessity
due to the update acceptance criteria. Else the ordinary tester's karma
would be "less worth" in the new system.

> I could worry about my packages not being stabilized, however that would
> be all I could do and it would have no effect. Frankly, I don't care
> about stable-status of my packages as that are Fedora rules that draw
> line between packager and tester `duties' in package update. I could
> become proven tester to test (not only) my own packages, however such
> cheating would be silly.

Which is why the current testing requirements are infeasible and insane.

Packagers ought to retain the freedom to decide what's most appropriate
for their updates … and only lose bits of that freedom when they take
their responsibilities too lightly and cause damage. As one of the
responsibilities, it may be important for packagers to disable bodhi
karma automatism.