QA process was Re: RPM submission procedure

[Michael Schwendt]

On Thu, 8 Jan 2004 19:01:11 +0100, Ronny Buchmann wrote:

> > My only other complaint, and it really is more of a suggestion, is
> > that it would be *really* nice if the easy things (like "does this
> > package build") were automated.  It would be *really* nice if the
> > automatically-built packages were put into a repository (accompanied
> > by USE AT YOUR OWN RISK warnings) that reviewers could download and
> > test from.  At that point it becomes almost zero effort for interested
> > people (like me) to install a package on a test box and let it run for
> > a while.
>
> IMHO this auto-built repository is the only testing repository needed.
> People could test packages from there and than vote for inclusion in "stable" 
> repo. This would simplify QA in a great way.

Except that it doesn't make technical reviews superfluous. To build a
binary package you could also use a tool like checkinstall and be done.
But for a src.rpm to be maintainable or "correct", a second or even third
pair of eyes sometimes does wonders. Once a package has been published in
"stable", it may be too late [or unclean] to fix some issues that have been
missed by testing prebuilt binaries only.

> The difference between "testing" and "unstable" is far from obvious and two 
> testing repositories are really not needed.

Agreed, except that the split between testing and unstable is a bit more
cautious than putting software which is known to crash randomly into
"testing".

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