[Fedora-spins] spins in f19

[Christoph Wickert]

Am Sonntag, den 27.01.2013, 12:01 -0700 schrieb Stephen John Smoogen:
> On 27 January 2013 06:53, Christoph Wickert <christoph.wickert at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Am Freitag, den 25.01.2013, 13:54 -0700 schrieb Kevin Fenzi:
> 
> > Makes sense, but IHMO dropping a spin will only make things
> > worse.Without live media, there is no easy way to test things and the in
> > the end, things that received little testing will be tested even less.
> > It seems that even KDE didn't get proper testing this time and I think
> > we all agree we cannot drop it.
> 
> A spin only "tests" a certain configuration and set of choices not
> made by the user but by the Spin groups. The problems usually show up
> when people deviate from that safe path.

We had serious problems even with the spins, that means even with this
particular combination of packages and configuration that were (supposed
to be) tested. 

> > I think we need to work on fixing the process. Dropping a spin is only
> > the last resort.
> 
> The most important fix to the process is making it not 1 deep.

+1. The idea is streamline it and make it more similar to the feature
process.

> There
> needs to be more than you Bruno and Kevin working on it because your
> times are maxed out and saying they will get better rarely works.

I had a tough time at work, but it has become better. I cannot speak for
Kevin or Bruno though. Kevin seems pretty busy with infrastructure, too.

> Second we need to get the owners of the spins take responsibility of
> them and keep them up to date. Sending stuff off 6 releases ago that
> no-one checks out just says that spins are where that data goes off to
> die.

Yes and no. The Design Suite for example shouldn't have been published
as it was unmaintained. Luya took over maintainership after the release,
so we cannot blame him.
On the other hand I feel we apply double standards. Have a look at the
Desktop live media. The desktop team only changes the package selection
or some configuration here and there, but if something is really (about
to be) broken, it's usually fixed by someone from rel-eng. The desktop
team hardly does any testing by themselves, instead QA does a lot.

I feel this is kind of unfair. Given how little attention the spins get
and the limited resources we have, it's not surprisingsome of them are
not in good shape.

Kind regards,
Christoph