Critpath updates process broken for certain components

[Adam Williamson]

On Sat, 2011-10-01 at 10:29 +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> Please note that I'm not claiming that the critpath process is broken
> in general. But it does not work for certain components. To be specific
> it does not work for Xorg drivers for non common hardware.
> 
> This morning bodhi send me 3 mails with the following subjects:
> [Fedora Update] [CRITPATH] [old_testing_critpath] xorg-x11-drv-qxl-0.0.21-3.fc14
> [Fedora Update] [CRITPATH] [old_testing_critpath] xorg-x11-drv-qxl-0.0.21-5.fc15
> [Fedora Update] [CRITPATH] [old_testing_critpath] xorg-x11-drv-qxl-0.0.21-5.fc16
> 
> Of which the first update has been in updates-testing since 2011-04-23 !!!
> 
> I know that Adam Williamson uses spice enabled vm's and thus the qxl driver
> for various QA tasks. I've asked him repeatedly to look at these, but all
> to no avail. Note I'm not blaming Adam for this, we all need to prioritize
> our time, so I completely understand that he has not gotten around to
> looking at these. I'm merely trying to documents my efforts to make the
> critpath procedure work for the qxl driver.
> 
> So there you have it, I hope that an update being stuck in updates-testing for
> 4+ months clearly show that some parts of the critpath process need to be re-thought.

qxl shouldn't actually be a very hard case, as the *easiest* way to do
critpath testing on old releases is in a VM. It may be the case,
however, that testers aren't aware exactly what the qxl driver is for
and that they're testing it if they're booting a spice VM. The package
description states only "X.Org X11 qxl video driver."; a better
description might well help. (note that most proven testers use the
fedora-easy-karma script, which prints the package description and
update info for each update; so if you ensure at least one of these
makes it clear to the tester exactly what the package in question
actually does and how they are likely to be using it, this will help in
obtaining feedback).

X drivers in general are a case that's already been identified and I
believe ajax's effort to split the more obscure ones out of critpath has
recently been revived. but qxl isn't really 'obscure', we probably just
need to make it clearer to people that a default F15 or F16 VM is
exercising it.

(on a personal note, absolutely all I've done for the last month is F16
beta testing. it's been the release cycle from hell. this applies to
many others in QA, which is why things may have been a bit slow on other
QA fronts.)
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net