Re: [gentoo-dev] Monthly Gentoo Council Reminder for March

[Richard Freeman]

Raúl Porcel wrote:
>
> So it would be cool if they accepted help from other devs who don't have
>  an amd64 system but have access to one and can test stuff. Cla is
> willing to help.
>

I think this may be more a question of what our policy should be 
regarding level of testing/stability accepted.  I'm sure manpower is a 
factor as well (number of devs isn't necessarily directly proportional 
to number of hours spent by those devs per week on gentoo).

I don't keyword a package stable unless I've done at least a moderate 
amount of testing on the package to ensure that it works.  If a package 
looks simple but obscure I might go ahead and install it and play with 
it, but I'd probably never keyword an emacs package stable, since I 
don't ever use emacs and I won't pretend that all there is to it is 
installing it and typing "hello world" and figuring out how to quit.

Also, the more critical a package is the less likely I am to keyword it 
without care - I'm not going to keyword apache stable unless I've 
installed it and put several of my php/cgi-perl apps through a fair 
number of chores since I know that people who run apache generally care 
that it works.

If there are folks out there who can test on amd64 systems then I'm sure 
that the amd64 team would look forward to their help (just contact 
kingtaco about it) - either by arch testing or perhaps by just 
keywording as appropriate.  However, we do need to be careful about just 
going on a hunt to close bugs - "if it builds then it's stable" isn't 
really a policy I think we want to follow.  As an amd64 user as well as 
a dev I know that I'd rather be a little further behind on package foo 
(with the ability to accept ~amd64 on it if I wanted to) than to have 
packages breaking every other week because somebody keyworded them just 
because it compiled and didn't have any glaring faults.

I think we also need better coordination across gentoo regarding when 
packages should be stabilized.  I've seen amd64 CC'ed on stablereq bugs 
filed by end users, and arch teams keywording them left and right, and 
there is no sign that the package maintainer wants the package 
stabilized.  I know that I'd be annoyed if arch teams stabilized a 
package that I maintained and I didn't intend for it to become stable 
for whatever reason.  At the very least maintainers should be contacted 
before packages go stable - and they should probably document their 
intent in STABLEREQ bugs before everybody goes crazy closing them out.

I think that if we have the right policies then we'll be where we want 
to be.  Personally, it doesn't concern me a great deal that there are 
tons of bugs open on an arch in and of itself (although blockers and 
security bugs are a different matter).  I'd rather that then keyword 
something stable anytime one person (usually not the maintainer) asks us 
to.  And users who feel like they're being held up should feel free to 
ping a dev to talk about it - and comments by users and maintainers in 
bugs indicating how stable a package really is make people like me more 
warm and fuzzy about keywording it without as much personal testing.
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