[gentoo-dev] QA Proposal v3

[Mark Loeser]

Here is the newest revision of my proposal.  Not much has changed, but I
added and changed some small things.  Constructive feedback is
appreciated.  I'd like to get this voted on by the council at the next
meeting.

* The QA team's purpose is to provide cross-team assistance in keeping
  the tree in a good state. This is done primarily by finding and pointing
  out issues to maintainers and, where necessary, taking direct action.
* In case of emergency, or if package maintainers refuse to cooperate,
  the QA team may take action themselves to fix the problem.  The QA
  team does not want to override the maintainer's wishes by default, but only
  wish to do so when the team finds it is in the best interest of users
  and fellow developers to have the issue addressed as soon as possible.
* The QA team may also offer to fix obvious typos and similar minor
  issues, and silence from the package maintainers can be taken as agreement
  in such situations.  Coding style issues fall under this category, and
  while they are not severe, they can make automated checks of the tree more
  difficult.
* There will be cases when our tools are incapable of handling a certain
  situation and policy must be broken in order to get something working
  completely.  This will hopefully not occur very often but each time it
  does occur, the QA team and the maintainer will come to some agreement
  on an interim solution and it is expected that a bug will be opened with
  the appropriate team to work towards a correct solution.
* In the case of disagreement on policy among QA members, the majority
  of established QA members must agree with the action.
* In the event that a developer still insists that a package does not
  break QA standards, an appeal can be made at the next council meeting. The
  package should be dealt with per QA's request until such a time that a
  decision is made by the council.
* Just because a particular QA violation has yet to cause an issue does
  not change the fact that it is still a QA violation.
* If a particular developer persistently causes breakage, the QA team
  may request that devrel re-evaluates that developer's commit rights.
  Evidence of past breakages will be presented with this request to
  devrel.
* The QA team will maintain a list of current "QA Standards" with
  explanations as to why they are problems, and how to fix the problem.
  The list is not meant by any means to be a comprehensive document, but
  rather a dynamic document that will be updated as new problems are
  discovered.  The QA team will also do their best to ensure all developer
  tools are in line with the current QA standards.
* In order to join the QA team, you must be a developer for at least 4
  months and must ask the current lead for approval.
* The QA team will work with Recruiters to keep related documentation
  and quizzes up to date, so that up and coming developers will have access
  to all of the necessary information to avoid past problems.
* QA will take an active role in cleaning up unmaintained and broken
  packages from the tree.  It is also encouraged of members of the QA team to
  assist in mentoring new developers that wish to take over unmaintained
  packages/herds.


-- 
Mark Loeser   -   Gentoo Developer (cpp gcc-porting qa toolchain x86)
email         -   halcy0n AT gentoo DOT org
                  mark AT halcy0n DOT com
web           -   http://dev.gentoo.org/~halcy0n/
                  http://www.halcy0n.com