[maemo-developers] Extras-testing improvements

[From: Attila Csipa]

On Tuesday 09 March 2010 13:01:32 Edward Page wrote:
> Will this be like government regulations where they increase year to
> year and we have to jump through more hoops all the time just to
> continue to have the "honor" of being in Extras?

The solution to this is to work on two fronts - not just raising the bar, but 
also helping developers make it over it (springs on shoes, if you wish :). A 
good example is the bugtracker. It became required for a reason, but the 
story does not end there, with improving the developer interface we (well, 
more like Niels et al :) can make fulfilling this requirement a breeze. 

> I disagree, it is the gutter.  As a developer I only leave
> extras-devel enabled long enough to install my software and test it in
> prep for extras-testing.

A few months back I would have agreed. However, since I published AppWatch, my 
view has changed dramatically. Turns out Extras-devel applications regularly 
have hundreds of 'silent' users willing to try out things, regardless of 
risk. Appwatch itself, even with it's huge Qt dependencies and occasional 
problems due to repository issues still had *thousands* of installs so far, 
and hundreds of active users. All this despite the very modest PR efforts (a 
single t.m.o. thread) and being in Extras-devel. Even while we put 'there be 
dragons' all over the place, the sheer number of N900 users means even a low 
percentage who does venture there is not that small in absolute numbers - and 
the beauty is that there is nothing wrong with it. The goal is not to keep 
people out with tooth and nail - it's to make them aware what they're dealing 
with, and if that's OK with them, great, it's one of the things that make 
Open Source good !

> or Extras-Hacking.

I would still prefer a PPA-style deployment so people would not trip over each 
other.


Regards,
Attila