Re: Release management and testing problems
On Sat, Aug 03, 2002 at 09:33:23AM +0200, Eduard Bloch wrote:
> > No, I'm telling you to _get a clue_.
> To be honest, I still have the impression that you use your get-a-clue
> statement just to make uncomfortable persons shut up.
I'd never have guessed.
> > Did you realise that I'd been testing "testing" for about a year before
> > it made it anywhere near the actual archive? Without any special access
> > to anything of any sort, or any effort by anyone else to make things
> > work better for me?
> >
> > If you want to experiment, do it on your own time.
> Sorry, but why should a new working/candidate branch needs such extensiv testing?
If it's hard to set up, there're lots of chances to make mistakes,
so it needs testing before you can be sure it works.
If it's easy to set up, there's no reason not to test it in the first
place.
These are fairly basic, obvious principles.
> IMHO the working/candidate implementation could profit from your
> experience and be implemented much faster. The pool structure is ready
> now, "testing" control scripts exist as example.
I'm sure it would. I'm not remotely convinced that it has anywhere near
enough benefit to justify its costs, though, so there's no way I'm going
to spend time on it that I could otherwise spend on useful things.
> > That's the way it works.
> ...it works FOR YOU. You are the release manager. You are the only
> person with adequate experience and access to all required facilities.
That is complete and utter bullshit.
You know, I wasn't born release manager. I wasn't release manager until
mid-2000; I'd been testing the "testing" scripts since late 1999, and
the only reason I offered to help Richard out was so I could get a better
understanding of what was going on.
> Who CAN do the same thing?
*Anyone*. If you're a Debian developer you can do *exactly* what I did:
find a .debian.org machine with a copy of the archive on it and whatever
other resources you need, and start messing around in /org/scratch/
or similar. Except, of course, we're not remotely at that point: before
that someone has to do some actual *research* to work out the extent of
the problem, and what fixes are *possible*.
> No, you do not offer your help when somebody
> presents a concept not developed by you, you just tell anyone to make
> everything in his own.
Oh, and when I was doing testing, none of the ftpmasters at the time (Guy
Maor, and Richard Braakman, primarily, iirc) helped out particularly.
Which was perfectly fine, since I didn't expect them to, or need them to.
> I personally would help Buxy implementing a such thing if someone would
> let us do it.
And even if you're *not* a developer, it's all free software: setup your
own copy of the archive on your own machines, and maintain it yourselves
as much as you like.
I can assure you from personal experience, that none of this is
particularly hard. If it *is* hard, it's because you're making it hard,
and if *you're* not willing to do the work, why are you expecting anyone
else to?
But hey, it's getting to be traditional to whine about how hard everything
is than just get out there and do it, so who am I to stand in your way?
Moan on!
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
``If you don't do it now, you'll be one year older when you do.''
Reply to: