[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Possible idea towards future package handling



I've just been reading on the wiki that someone things there should be
a pretesting branch for Debian, (good idea in my opinion), but why
don't we try and stop rouge packages at unstable.  Some maintainers
obviously make mistakes every now and then while packaging "z",
sometimes (if not all the time) the maintainer is generally unaware on
any problems, so why not say the following:

In addition to testings requirements (x days, no more RC bugs than the
last version, all builds up to date), why don't we say, that all
packages need to be verified as "up to policy" and
"installable/uninstallable" by say 2 different people, this could be
made up of a separate team (as I'm not sure on the numbers of uploads
that pass though unstable a week I can't really guess the size), this
would not require members to be DD's just people that have been around
enough to earn respect of RM's/FTPMasters etc...

In my opinion this could help cut down on "Serious/Policy" RC bugs
before release times, Grave/Whatever RC bugs due to uninstallability,
etc... etc...  Which would hence mean that RM's would have less triage
work to do for RC bugs during release season, FTP Masters would not
have to worry about the mass rushes of "hinting for removal" because,
a fair few bugs could be prevented.

Of course I do realize it has cons, some of them that I can think of now are:
  * With 11 arch's at present this would mean a fair few people would
be required to do this and not get each other bored.
 * To introduce, it would need a lot of planning, and WAY more
detailed thought process.
 * Unstable uploads aren't made in an organized manner (i.e exactly 1
every 5 minutes), and could hold up serious uploads.
  * Some packages may be *so* dangerous (i.e. they  it's a really
poorly made package making it via some way to perform rm -rdf
/etc/init.d or something) that it may cause frustration for people
"moderating" the queue
* The cons most likely outweigh the pros.

Anyway, this is just opinion and something that I thought of, it most
likely could be turned upside down and inside out to make it a WAY
better idea, and also, as I'm not a DD I may have misjudged some parts
of the release process etc.  In general:  I don't mind what happens to
this idea, if can be improved then by all means, if it can't feel free
to scrap/ignore it.

-- 
N Jones
Proud Debian & FOSS User
Debian Maintainer of: html2ps & ipkungfu



Reply to: