Why is the fedora.us (Fedora Extras) repository growing so slowly??

[Jaap A. Haitsma]

Michael,

Don't you think that a "bit of noise" on for instance the fedora-test 
mailing list (if that's ok with RedHat) would help.
Many people read that list and the probability of somebody interested in 
helping out therefore will increase.

Jaap

> On Mon, 08 Dec 2003 21:52:35 +0100, Jaap A. Haitsma wrote:
> 
> 
>>First of all I want to mention that I'm very grateful for what the 
>>people in Fedora Extras are  doing.
>>
>>I noticed that the number of packages in Fedora Extras (I'll use this 
>>name to refer to the repository at fedora.us for the rest of this mail)
>>is growing rather slowly on average 2 package announcements a day for 
>>november (which are both updates and new packages).
>>
>>Also I noticed that the QA queue is really full. 295 packages are 
>>waiting for QA. 
> 
> 
> As mentioned earlier, a lot of those packages have a very special target
> group and are in need of people who are familiar with the packaged
> software. E.g. lots of programming languages.
> 
> 
>>And Warren Togami seems to be the owner of about 80 
>>percent of these. This guy must be making 40 hour days.
> 
> 
> He's just the default person who's assigned to new package requests.  The
> actual packager is listed in the "reporter" field. Package updates are
> assigned to the actual package maintainer instead. 
> 
> But otherwise it's correct that some of the packagers maintain many a high
> number packages.
> 
> 
>>So I think he needs some help if we want to make fedora extras live up 
>>to what's in the FAQ (Second bullet)
>>
>>[Quote]
>>How does Fedora differ from FreshRPMS or other repositories?
>>
>>     * Fedora apt/yum enforces GPG signature checking for your protection.
>>     * All other repositories are made by a single person. Fedora can 
>>have a lot more packages, and of higher quality, because we have have 
>>many package developers working together on a common goal.
>>[/Quote]
>>
>>What I understand is that QA has to be approved by two developers and 
>>one of a trusted fedora.us developer which check the spec files and stuff.
>>
>>If there aren't too many developers this can take quite a while I guess.
> 
> 
> It's also an indication that there's no interest in some of the packages
> in the queue.
>  
> 
>>I for one (as a non packager) wouldn't mind testing binary packages 
>>which are in the testing or unstable queues and I'm interested in.
> 
> 
> If you're also interested in helping with package requests but are not
> familiar with rebuilding src.rpms, simply add yourself to the "Cc" field
> of such a bugzilla entry and ask whether the packager could provide a
> prebuilt binary for testing.  That however bears a security risk for you.
>  
> 
>>My proposal would be, to have packagers post a message that a RPM is in 
>>the testing or unstable queue and needs testing. Normal users can then 
>>just test if they work well and send a message back on the fedora-test 
>>list if it works or doesn't. I saw that in Bugzilla that QA/packager 
>>people are doing all this.
> 
> 
> Approved packages are pre-published in the "pending" repository tree
> (which is similar to Fedora Core's "Test Updates") where interested people
> can check out the prebuilt binary rpms and report success/failure in the
> corresponding package request bug ticket.
>