[maemo-developers] PR1.2 SDK for Extras-devel: how to solve?

[From: Graham Cobb]

On Wednesday 07 April 2010 16:54:28 Niels Breet wrote:
> On Wed, April 7, 2010 16:41, Andrew Flegg wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 15:13, Bryan Jacobs <no at landwarsin.asia> wrote:
> >> It seems to me that the real problem is actually the difficulty in
> >> implementing #4 above.  If there were magically separate infrastructure
> >> for each incompatible release, there would be no issue - a developer
> >> uploads their package to each repository for which it builds (preferably
> >> through a list of checkboxes in the web interface), and a user selects
> >> one or more package sources that match the preinstalled software on
> >> their device.  No problems, mate.
> >
> > True; however what about the QA process? The UI at
> > http://maemo.org/packages/ is getting better, but it's also getting
> > more familiar. How do we:
> >
> > a) not confuse ad-hoc testers b) ensure that versions in all repos get
> > tested?
>
> This is a non-trivial issue. Testing against all repos is not going to
> work, imagine what happens when we have PR1.2+1 etc.

I agree.  There is little point in having repositories for old versions if 
nothing can ever get promoted into them because there are very few testers 
left.   Unless they are really intended just to be archives: they work while 
the new version is being introduced (like where we are at at the moment with 
PR1.2) but once the new version has been out a few weeks, they just drop into 
archive mode with no promotions, just an archive of software for the old 
version.

> > One suggestion would be to promote all versions simultaneously, but
> > there are obvious drawbacks with that!
>
> That would make the most recent repo the best supported and tested repo.
> Older repos might or might not work. But then again, that is what -devel
> is now too.

Actually I would make the process "make all versions eligible for promotion 
simultaneously" -- once the latest version is tested the developer can 
promote the other versions without QA when they wish but they can choose to 
do some more testing themselves if they wish.

In an earlier discussion I had proposed another alternative: have a single 
repository but multiple autobuilders feeding it.  I could submit to either 
the PR1.1 or PR1.2 autobuilder but the output would go into a single place.  
This seems more efficient than the "build with PR1.1 and if that fails try 
PR1.2" option but otherwise quite similar.

The only problem I have noticed so far with that would come when you 
introduced a new version which made use of some PR1.2 feature, and hence was 
built with PR1.2.  At that time, the PR1.1 version would no longer be 
installable (as it has a lower version number and is in the same repository).  
But for cases like this, where PR1.2 is expected to be fairly quickly adopted 
once it is eventually released, this would probably work well enough.

Graham