RFC: Debian Quality Assurance Group
Hi everyone,
I have adjusted Vincent Renardias' proposal which Martin Schulze
kindly dug out of the archives. Here it is, and I hope you all
will have something to say about it, especially if there are any
errors to correct. After we make a conclusion and any needed changes,
we must determine where to put this.
If it is neccessary to make all this official policy, lets go to
debian-policy list and vote for including this text in policy.
I'd personally prefer this whole text being included in doc-debian
package (it doesn't have to be that exact package, it just seems
the most appropriate to me) as /usr/doc/debian/debian-qa.txt, and
that this file is referenced by the policy or any other document
that is official as policy.
So, here it is:
+++ cut +++
The Debian Quality Assurance Group
by Vincent Renardias <vincent@debian.org>, February 1997
and Josip Rodin <joy@debian.org>, April 1999.
-------------------------------------------------------------- version 0.1
The Quality Assurance Group (QA Group) is attempt of the Debian Project
to accelerate fixing bugs in our distribution. Primary occupation 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, 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
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 one month,
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 those 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take care of them after this delay, they will be withdrawn from the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.
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, on behalf of his or the Group's. The permission is
considered granted if there are no objections in one week.
When QA Group members find problems in maintained packages (package that
have an active maintainer), they will send fixes to their maintainers
through the bug tracking system (BTS). After a patch is sent to the
maintainer, the QA Group member will wait some amount of time. If in that
period the maintainer does not do the upload himself, the QA Group member
will do the 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: 30 days
* cosmetic fix or a wish implementation: 45 days
Note: the second two types may only be uploaded to unstable.
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 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, and at
least 2 days (one day during freeze) before doing the upload. They will
have to say which package and of which version and distribution will they
upload, naming the exact bug reports that will 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
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You actually made it this far?! :) Thanks for reading...
--
enJoy -*/\*- http://jagor.srce.hr/~jrodin/
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