Re: [gentoo-dev] evolution of x86 stabling procedures

[Mark Loeser]

Grant Goodyear <g2boojum@g.o> said:
> I maintain very few packages these days, so it was quite a surprise to
> me today when I discovered that peer review is now effectively a part of
> the x86 stabilization process.  When I wrote GLEP 40, the problem that I
> was trying to solve was that of devs stabling packages without ever
> testing the package on an actual stable system (because most devs run
> ~arch).  As such, the language in GLEP 40 essentially suggests that devs
> could still stable their own packages, but only if they were properly
> testing the package on a stable system.  That policy has evolved over
> time to one where devs are actively discouraged from stabling their own
> packages, thereby ensuring that at least one other person examines and
> tests the ebuild before it becomes stable.  (I'm still not quite sure of
> the actual procedure, so I'm not sure how many people are generally
> involved in this peer review process.)  From a QA perspective, more eyes
> can only be a good thing, and this idea has been tossed around
> on-and-off for years.  On the other hand, peer review could potentially
> really slow things down, which is why we'd always rejected that approach
> in the past.  Are other arch's also requiring peer review?  Do we have
> any statistics or anecdotal evidence for what's improving, and whether
> or not anything is getting worse as a result?

Well, since you decided to bring this up on here, I guess we'll just try
to address everything.

I believe almost everyone has been happy with how the x86 team has
turned out.  I have only gotten positive feedback from people and users.
Despite that, we still have some devs, and *teams*, that don't follow
proper keywording procedures.

Peer review should be part of any stablization process.  The glep that
*you* wrote even provides for it:

For a package to move to stable, the following guidelines must be met:
...
* The relevant arch team must agree to it.

Maybe it was not what you intended, but we have not been slowing down
any process as far as I'm aware, since we get to our bugs as quickly as
we possibly can.  And every arch team has their own keywording policy.
I don't see why x86 can not have the poilcy that we decided on.  If you
have MIPS hardware and you mark something ~mips, I'm pretty sure they
will be pissed if they didn't give you prior permission.  Probably the
same for a few archs.

The x86 team has been asking for months now that everyone files a bug to
have their package stablized, and we allow maintainers to stablize their
package when it is impossible for us to do so.  I'm trying to figure out
why this is a problem all of a sudden, because things seemed to be going
just fine.

Thanks,

-- 
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