[maemo-community] Extras and Fremantle

[From: Quim Gil]

ext Jeremiah Foster wrote:

> It can work for maemo, but debian is much larger and has grown over  
> the years, so it can take time to work out the kinks.

Debian is applying this process for the whole platform, thousands of
packages. Since Maemo SW takes care of the official platform and apps.
maemo.org extras should take care only about a subset. A significant
one, but not as big and complex as a whole patform that is stable,
secure, builds, etc.

> 
>> What is left for us is a clear definition of
>> the QA policy,
> 
> This is important, and involves a lot of community input. It should  
> most likely have a dedicated mailing list.

In fact it requires a good draft in a wiki page. I don't think "lot of
input" would bring much more than input from you driving plus a dozen of
contributors bringing ideas and reviewing drafts.


>> the automated tests
> 
> There are some issues - who currently is responsible for the automated  
> tools, automated tests and build daemons? To what degree do they  
> implement policy? Who maintains them, Nokia or maemo.org?

Maemo SW has engineers and even project specializing in test automation
tools. I would expect some of their work for internal development to be
recyclable for maemo.org. If we connect the right people inside and outside.

>> and then adapt the current
>> repository structure to this new one.
> 
> Unfortunately this is not trivial. The simple reason is that debian  
> uses tools that are built for debian and seem to work poorly other  
> places. Debian uses dak (debian archive kit) to manage repos. Ubuntu  
> uses something else. dak is big, poorly documented, and is not  
> currently being used in maemo, this means the current repo system  
> would have to be adapted to dak. Think new repos, new documentation,  
> new policy, etc.

Is it so difficult to come up with a script able to promote packages
automatically based on certain discrete criteria? I'm not saying it's
easy but I don't think we need the whole Debian infrastructure for that.

> Adapting debian tools to manage the maemo repositories might be a  
> really good idea, but there are some significant technical hurdles.

So basically what we could have is:

- Basically no tools for extras-experimental. Upload your stuff and you
are done.

- Automated build and testing and policy tools for extras-devel. If you
can get there it means that you have done a decently good job already.
Starting with what we have now and improving. Every time someone (could
be Nokia) complains about the poor QA you can answer 'feel free to
provide tools or the means to get a better QA process'.

- Automatic promotion process from devel to testing and to stable based
on simple rules e.g. karma value, downloads, days in repo,
critical/blocker bugs...

-- 
Quim Gil