Automate parts of review process?

[Axel Thimm]

Hi,

I think large parts of the review process could be automated or at the
very least aided, so that reviewers have less trivial stuff to check
and can be reviewing more effectively.

In order to allow any kind of automation, the submission process would
have to change, e.g. instead of posting a URL a packager would submit
the whole src.rpm to some submission mechanism. There the system could
test whether the package builds on all non-excluded platforms and on
the supported distribution releases (development and any more the
submitter choses to add). The system would furthermore be able to run
rpmlint and other rpm checking tools on the generated packages and
prepare a submission web page for the packager (for example if rpmlint
output is not silent the packager would have to comment on it, or if a
static lib is found the same and so on). The result would be cast into
bugzilla.

That would catch most of the trivial packaging issues especially ones
made by newbies before any reviewer needs to spend time on it.

Perhaps the review process itself could use a helper that for example
offers the proper remaining checklists for the package in
question. Since the helper has access to the package it would know
which items of the review are irrelevant and hide them from the
reviewer (e.g. if the package has no python bits mask away python
related checks). This part would be optional, e.g. reviewers are free
to use the usuall methods of checking a package or could opt to using
the helper.

Would something like that make sense?
-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
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