[maemo-developers] QA process = bug fixing disincentive?

[From: Graham Cobb]

Attila said...
> On Wednesday 04 November 2009 10:28:58 Andrew Flegg wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 09:03,  <tero.kojo at nokia.com> wrote:
> > > Two days later I notice a blinking orange light in my status bar. I see
> > > a new version of the application. I install, I check what has changed
> > > (minor or major?), I run my tests and thumb it up again.
> >
> > Aside: how do you check what has changed?
>
> This is one of the things I miss sorely from the Application Manager. Sure,
> you can see the description and version, but not things like free/non-free,
> the repo and last, but not least, the changelog (maybe based on the
> debian/changelog most packages have, anyway).

For users AppMgr has a user-friendly alternative: you specify an update description in the control file.  Now that I think of it this needs to go into the extras testing rules: any package which is already in Extras must specify an update description to give people information on why they should upgrade.

But the update description does not help with testing: (a) it is user friendly text, not a developer changelog and (b) the description is vs. the version already in Extras not vs. the last extras-testing version.

It sounds like it would be useful to start including changelog in Maemo packages and make it visible from the package page.

Graham