Quality Assurance Group mini-policy
Hi people,
I was told that the general public doesn't really know what is going
on on the Quality Assurance Group list, so I'll give you a peak preview
of the text we are planning to make our mini-policy.
This is not a formal proposal or something (yet), just something that you
just might want to read if you're a developer. It also is not correct in
some parts, we on the -qa list haven't yet determinednor polished up all
the details (waiting on Joey to provide some useful data :), but the point
is clear, I hope.
I also hope that there won't be too much flaming about this. ;>
So, here it is:
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The Debian Quality Assurance Group
by Vincent Renardias <vincent@debian.org>, February 1997
and Josip Rodin <joy@debian.org>, April 1999.
-------------------------------------------------------------- version 0.2
The Quality Assurance Group (QA Group) is an attempt of the Debian Project
to accelerate fixing bugs in our distribution. The primary function of
the group is finding and maintaining orphaned packages, and helping to
find and fix various bugs. It is not really a separated entity within the
project; it is just a group of people dedicated to seeing the distribution
keep the reputation of a quality system that it rightfully earned through
the years.
When a package is orphaned, one of the QA Group members will make a call
for a new maintainer on the general developer mailing list, and inform
the Work Needing and Prospective Packages (WNPP) list maintainer to list
the package as orphaned by the maintainer (if that was not already done).
If nobody applies for the maintainership of the package after two months,
we shall proceed depending on the importance of the involved package:
* Important package (Priority: standard or higher) - the package will
be maintained by QA Group members until a new maintainer for it/them
is found. They will be listed on the WNPP page as orphaned by the
QA Group. We shall consider lowering the priority of those important
packages that don't get a maintainer within three months, and after
that treat them as being from the second group,
* Not so important package - if there's still nobody volunteering to
take care of them after this delay, they will be withdrawn from the
unstable distribution and put in the directory 'project/orphaned' on
the FTP site. They will be listed on the WNPP page as orphaned by the
QA Group. Packages that don't get a maintainer for one year or two
Debian releases will be withdrawn completely from the distribution and
the FTP site. They will, however, stay archived together with the
releases they were in, and mentioned on the withdrawn packages' webpage.
Any Debian developer (package maintainer) can become a member of the
QA Group, and is welcome to do so. It is done simply by subscribing to
our mailing list, and sending a note about what you want to do. You can
later unsubscribe from the list if you choose not to participate in the
effort any more.
QA Group members are in constant search for bugs, inconsistancies and
room for improvement in all of our packages. When they find a problem
and a way to fix it in an orphaned package, they will be able to do
a bugfix upload whenever it is neccessary to do so. Any bug reports
that their uploads fix may be closed by them.
As noted before, any other interested maintainer who is willing to do an
upload of an orphaned package is welcome to ask on the QA Group list for
permission to do so. The permission is considered granted if there are
no objections in one week.
When QA Group members find problems in maintained packages (packages that
have an active maintainer), or solutions for already reported problems
against those packages, they will send fixes to their maintainers through
the bug tracking system (BTS). The QA Group member should offer himself
for doing the NMU, but he must not instantly do it. See below for exact
delays. If in that period the maintainer does not do the upload himself,
the QA Group member who submitted the bug report will try to find a reason
why the maintainer didn't do it. If the maintainer really appears not able
to do the upload himself, the submitter (or for that matter, any other
QA Group member) will proceed and do the bugfix upload.
In the normal development period (when only unstable and stable
distributions exist), delays are as follows:
* fix for a critical/grave bug: 2 days
* fix for any kind of security or important bug: 7 days
* fix for a bug of normal severity: 20 days
* cosmetic fix or a wish implementation: 40 days
The latter two types of bug fixes may only be
uploaded to unstable (all others may be uploaded to stable if neccessary).
The above delays are reduced by a factor of 2 in the month preceding a
freeze.
During a freeze (when there is a stable, frozen, and unstable
distribution), delays are as follows:
* fix for a security bug: 1 day
* any other bug fix: 7 days
The urgent security bug fixes are almost always done by our Security
Officers, usually in the matter of hours.
The QA Group members making bugfix uploads will need not only to respect
the delays above, but will also have to announce their intent to upload
on our mailing list, CC:ing the maintainer of the related package, at
least 2 days (one day during freeze) before doing the upload. They will
have to report on which package they will upload, as well as version,
distribution and the exact bug reports to be marked as fixed after the
upload. The 'Maintainer' field of those uploaded packages will stay
unchanged.
However, if QA Group members make 3 consecutive bugfix uploads within two
months, with still no action from the actual package maintainer, then the
package will be marked orphaned, and the 'Maintainer' field of the
package will be set to "Debian QA Group <debian-qa@lists.debian.org>".
This will be announced on the developers mailing list and sent to
the WNPP maintainer.
Notes:
The general developer mailing list is debian-devel@lists.debian.org.
The mailing list of the QA Group is debian-qa@lists.debian.org. WNPP
page maintainer e-mail is wnpp@debian.org, and the web page location is:
http://www.debian.org/doc/prospective-packages.html
Web page containing more information on the packages that were withdrawn
from the distribution is: http://www.debian.org/doc/withdrawn-packages.html
The Security Officers can be reached at the following e-mail address:
debian-security-private@lists.debian.org.
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--
enJoy -*/\*- http://jagor.srce.hr/~jrodin/
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