Re: Thoughts on Debian quality, including automated testing

[Thomas Hood <jdthood@yahoo.co.uk>]

Since I contributed to taking the thread off on a particular tangent
I feel I should try to bring it back to its original topic, which
is an important one.

I would like to hear some discussion about whether or not the quality
of Debian is high enough; and if it is not high enough, what can be
done to improve it?

Lars's headings were:

    A) Prevent bugs from happening in the first place
    B) Find and report bugs
    C) Fix bugs that have been reported
    D) Prevent bugs from entering the archive
    Automated testing of program functionality
    Let's take quality assurance seriously

Under most of these topics Lars discussed automated testing.  Are
there objections to Lars's concrete proposals (e.g., standardization
on a way to invoke package specific tests)?  Are there other ideas?
Should Debian do more auditing, for example?

For C, Lars discussed different degrees of shift from solitary toward
collective maintainership.  In the sequel opinions were emphatically
expressed that such a shift is not necessarily a good thing.  The
question remains whether better quality can be realized by changing
the organization in some way.  Perhaps not.  Then what other things
can be done to help individual maintainers fix more bugs and fix them
better?
-- 
Thomas Hood