Re: so what? Re: Debian development modem

[James A.Treacy <treacy@debian.org>]

> A lot of the bugs are with a lot of packages that a lot of people don't use
> I have seen.  Perhaps we should consider moving away from versioned dists
> and move to a date-based dist in which all new packages start out in an
> unstable area and after some criteria is met (time for people using it to
> find bugs, any serious bugs being squashed) these packages could be
> considered stable...
> 
There are a lot of people using packages every day that aren't formally
contributing to the testing project.

I have thought a (little) bit about a system along the lines you mention.
We could create a web page for every package in unstable that hasn't gone
into stable yet. When someone has installed a package, they could go to the
page for that package and fill out a form. The package can get into stable
only when certain criteria have been met. The criteria could depend on the
package. For a simple library, having 5 people install and use it (and fill
out the form) might be sufficient. A package with a lot more users might
require more responses, e.g. TeX needs 20 people to fill out the form.
A package which requires configuration (like smail) may not only need
a larger number of people to fill out the form, but a sufficient number
of people with each type of configuration (the form provides a list).

There are two problems with this. First is security. We want all users to
be able to fill out the forms, but how do we keep evil minded people from
ruining the results. Second, is designing a framework that is simple, but
accomplishes the required goals.

If simple is the right way to go, there could simply be a line in the
control file specifying the number of people that need to fill out the form
(with a positive response) before the package is allowed into stable.

There are a number of issues that I have intentionally ignored in this. I
am just throwing this out to see what people think.

Jay Treacy


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