[maemo-developers] Repositories mess: conclusions and actions

[From: Levi Bard]

> This all sounds very positive to me.  The only thing I'd add is that
> Nokia/Maemo should consider providing a auto-builder service for Maemo
> packages, such that
>
> - developers could upload source code packages
>
> - the autobuilder would attempt to build them, for all supported
>   platforms (gregale, bora and chinook)
>
> - if everything built successfully, the auto-builder would
>   automatically submit through to the extras-testing repository
>
> - if there were problems, the auto-builder would email those back to
>   the developer.
>
> Technically this is separate from the repository issue, but
> (i) I think it is needed, in addition to your repository proposals, in
> order to dramatically improve the availability and quality of 3rd
> party packages, and (ii) it would be a major incentive for developers
> to use extras and extras-testing instead of starting up their own
> repositories.

I strongly agree with this.  It would have three major advantages:
first, it would relieve developers from having to maintain a
scratchbox target for every active platform version; second, it can
potentially add some quality assurance via audit tools (e.g. lintian,
hildon-audit); third, it guarantees that anything uploaded to garage
extras comes with source.

This can be a good way for Nokia to simultaneously support the
community effort and begin to ensure quality for users.


-- 
"Tak does not require that we think of Him, only that we think."
--Grag Bashfullsson
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html