[arch-dev-public] Possible signoff addendum

[Dusty Phillips]

2008/9/2 Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com>:
> On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 11:11 AM, Dusty Phillips <buchuki at 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to testing packages just like there is currently a 'flag out of date'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.