Re: Reviving Debian QA
On Sunday 28 March 1999, at 21 h 48, the keyboard of Martin Schulze
<joey@finlandia.Infodrom.North.DE> wrote:
> [ Mailing to Debian Development and Debian QA, please send replies
> *only* to Debian QA <debian-qa@lists.debian.org> ]
As you wish but please CC: me, I'm not on debian-qa.
> What is debian-qa and is it eatable?
I agree with Adam that the goals seem very broad. Reading your message, one
could think that Debian-QA is everything in Debian. Is QA really the technical
direction of Debian or is it more a "sweeper" checking packages in the back
office?
I do not find a document on the Web server <http://www.debian.org/devel/>
describing what is QA (my management wants me to do QA here, with ISO 9001 and
so on, but it's probably not the same).
> Although we have strict rules (Policy) that defines requirements for
> packages there is still missing a "department" which assures that
> every package is packaged well and integrates in the system nicely.
Isn't it the job of developers? And isn't checking the role of every other
developer? As a packager myself, I appreciate, first the m68k porting team,
for their good bug reports, which helped me a lot to improve the quality of my
packages, then the other developers and users who fill in the BTS, our main QA
tool and something we should be proud of.
> . Check old bugs - and work on them
>
> . Check packages with lots of bugs - and work on them
This is the normal job of any developer. I took over dupload and squashed two
dozens if bugs. Am I doing QA?
> . Check if packages are policy conforming
Isn't it done by dinstall? I had several packages rejected by it, so there is
a control.
> If you find packages which lack support for some of the features
> mentioned above the proper action would be to file a wishlist bug
> report. The bug report has to point to accurate documentation or
> better include a description of the missing feature and a description
> how to solve this. It would be best if the report would include a
> proper patch/menu file/doc file etc.
I'll add one: one of the worst packages, with respect with the BTS, is the BTS itself <http://bugs.debian.org/bugs.debian.org>. Bugs, even important and easy-to-fix, are obviously completely ignored, which is a shame. Next QA goal: fix the bugs (no, I cannot do a NMU, I'm not root on the machine which runs the BTS).
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