On Thu, 4 Sep 2008, Dusty Phillips wrote:
2008/9/2 Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@gmail.com>:
On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 11:11 AM, Dusty Phillips <buchuki@gmail.com> wrote:
Another alternative:
- Create a web based interface to allow community users to signoff on packages. We could have a policy of X number of user signoffs is equal to one developer signoff. Developers can be trusted to test it better (or not? ;-), but arch members can contribute too. In that case we still need some incentive to the end users to bother doing this. There aren't a lot of people like dolby and cactus who seem to actually like working really hard with as little recognition as possible.
I actually thought about this a while back. It was in terms of "each package needs 10 points, developer signoffs are 5 points, TU signoffs are 3 points, user signoffs are one point"
It might be a useful way to find active community members too. If you could think of a way to creatively implement something like this, I'd be all for it, assuming other people are.
The obvious implementation would be to give people the option to sign up for an account and to give them signoff permission (as Paul suggested). This is easy to implement but it means non-devs have to have access to dev.archlinux.org or we have to break some of the caching on the public site (which would make cactus weep). It also means yet another fricking user account that people have to sign up for.
A less invasive option would be to add a 'signoff this package' link to testing packages just like there is currently a 'flag out of date' link. But it would be hard to police if some asshat wanted to come through and click the signoff button 50 times even though the package was thoroughly busted.
There have been some bug reports suggesting linking packages to flyspray tickets (or vice versa), and I have a personal vendetta against flyspray so another option would be to create a new package-based bug tracker and port existing bugs and user accounts from flyspray. Then anyone with a 'Arch Linux KISS Bugtracker' account would also have the ability to signoff on packages. So people could actively log in and either say "yo this package works so good I want it to go live (ie: signoff)" or "wtf this package is broken, fix it fix it whine whine whine (ie: attach a bug to the package)".
The question isn't so much which of these to do as how much time do I have to commit to it (within epsilon of 0), how many other awesome people want to submit patches (approximately 2), and how soon do we need it (two months back?)
Dusty
PS: sorry for not replying sooner, that little bit of time I have for Arch is mostly being eaten up by schwag lately.
This sounds complicated. I think we could improve signoff by being more organized. One of the current problem is that we have packages that very few devs uses (wireless drivers, file syatem tools, raid, lvm, etc). As we don't know how many dev uses these, at every signoff thread we are probably waiting for signoffs that will never come. And the users probably assume that eventually a dev will signoff. So Aaron has to come and give his "untested" signoff just to get things moving. To improve this, we should make a list of these low-usage packages with the name of the devs that actually uses them (and for which architecture). This might even encourage signoff if a dev knows he's the only one who can signoff a package. If there are packages that not enough dev use to do the signoff, we could do one of two options: 1) Make an exceptions for these packages. We move them to core once the devs who use them have signed off. We could also force them to remain in testing for a minimal time (few days) to be more safe. This is equivalent to what we do now when Aaron gives his "untested" signoff except we don't wait for a few weeks for signoffs that will never come. 2) We involve the community at large. In the signoff thread, we explicitely state that we need community signoffs and for which architecture. Users signoff by replying directly to the dev who started the signoff thread or to the arch-general ML. If a few users signoff, then we move the package to core. The points system is not pratical. If no dev use a package, then we would need signoff from 7 TU or 20 users or any combination. This is a lot of signoff. If very few devs use a package, then it's probably the case for the community as well so it might take a long time to get all these signoffs. The signoff threads are on the arch-dev-public ML which is intented for Arch developpement. I assume that users subscribed to this list are more technical oriented and have Arch at heart. So if they signoff a package, then they probably know how to test it, have tested it and verified that it work as intended. Anyway, we would have their email address in case there are problems. Eric -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.