Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2016-08-14

[William Hubbs]

On Thu, Aug 04, 2016 at 04:15:14PM +0200, Kristian Fiskerstrand wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> the Gentoo Council will meet again on Sunday, August 14 at 19:00 UTC
> in #gentoo-council on FreeNode.
>
> Please reply to this message on the gentoo-project list with any items
> the council should put on its agenda to discuss or vote on.

I feel that our stable tree is so far behind on all
architectures that we are doing our stable users a disservice, so I
would like to open up a discussion here, and maybe some policy changes
at the next meeting.

Ultimately, I think we need some form of automated stabilization, e.g.
if a package version sits in ~ for 30 days and there are no blockers at
that point, the new version should go automatically to stable on all
architectures where there is a previous stable version.

I realize that automation is going to take a lot of work, so in the
meantime, I would like to discuss changes to our stabilization policies
that will get new versions of packages to stable faster.

The first issue is maintainers not filing stable requests for new
versions of packages in a timely manor. I'm not sure how to get around
this, but I feel that once a version of a package is stable, we are
doing a disservice to our stable users by not keeping stable as current
as possible.  I am as bad as anyone; it is easy to forget to file
stable requests until someone pings me or files the request
themselves.

I have heard other maintainers say specifically that they do not file
stable requests unless a user asks them to, but Again, I do not feel
comfortable with this arrangement if there is an old version of the
package in stable. Users shouldn't have to ask for newer versions to be
stabilized; this should be driven by the maintainers.

The second issue is slow arch teams. Again, by not moving packages from
~ to stable, we are doing a disservice to our stable users.

I can think of two ways we can improve our situation.

We can allow maintainers to stabilize new versions of certain types of
 packages on all arches where there is a previous version of the package stable
 without filing stable requests. This would take a significant load off
 of the arch teams.

For packages that do not fit the first group, we could require stable
requests, but allow maintainers to stabilize the new versions after a
timeout (I would propose 30 days).

What do folks think?

William