Re: Debconf QA BOF summary / handling of orphaned packages

[Lucas Nussbaum <lucas@lucas-nussbaum.net>]

On 05/08/09 at 14:41 +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 05, 2009 at 08:27:22AM +0200, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> > Actually, the counter-argument is that we don't want to make it
> > *harder* to do a QA upload.
> 
> That was not the counter-argument back then [1], it might be a new /
> different counter-argument.
> 
> [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2007/08/msg00073.html

Actually, it kind-of was, see the subthread that starts here:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2007/08/msg00076.html

> > Currently, it's "apt-get source ; make change ;
> > dput". If we used a VCS, we would have to create:
> > - a process to auto-import orphaned packages into the VCS
> > - procedures to commit changes to VCS before doing QA uploads
> > 
> > I don't have numbers about that, but a fair share of QA uploads are done
> > by one- or two-timers, even a majority of uploads is done by QA folks.
> > We don't want to make it harder for those one-timers to improve the
> > status of orphaned packages.
> 
> Frankly, I don't buy this. Nowadays everybody should be able to work
> with common $VCS. But even when this is not the case, $VCSs are always
> unofficial wrt the archive: it is not *mandatory* to use them, even
> for normal (non-QA) NMUs.
> 
> So even checking in orphaned packages in $VCS does not make it harder
> to do a QA upload. If you want to use it: fine, otherwise you can
> always upload the "old" way.

I'm not sure I understand what you want to do. You want to import all
orphaned packages into $VCS, so that it is easier for people to work on
them. But then, you want to allow people to upload orphaned packages
without using $VCS, which would lead to a very confusing situation.

I don't think that our current workflow for QA uploads is suboptimal,
but I have not done many QA uploads. Maybe the best thing to do would be
to ask people who do a lot of QA uploads, and see if using a VCS would
help them?
-- 
| Lucas Nussbaum
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