[maemo-developers] Package promoting

[From: Polyvertex]

Indeed, I own a stuck package :)

I do not want blame the promoting process because I do not have enough
experience on using it and I have no clue how it could be fairly
improved. I just want to make a feedback about it from a developer's
point of view.

In the case of my application, gpsrecorder (as its name says : a GPS
data logger), it is clear this is not the kind of application which
can be as popular as gPodder for example and since I do not talk too
much about my application and spend only very little time on
maemo.org's talk forum, there are not a lot of people who's using it.

But, the few users it has seem to be quite happy with the latest
version in extras-testing (0.1.152) and no bug has been reported to
the tracker since its release BUT a user do not always vote and this
version, as the previous one, is stuck in the testing repository with
a Karma of 4 (4/4 positive votes).

Please don't get me wrong, I do not care if my application is widely
used or not. But if a user wants to give it a try because he thinks my
application is what he is looking for, I, as a developer, would like
the best possible user experience for him.

In this case, I think this situation is a shame because the version in
the extras repository (0.1.112) is very old, it has been developed and
released before the PR1.2 firmware so for example, it does not make
use of the new Maemo dedicated controls/features from Qt 4.6 (i.e.:
user experience is far from optimal compared to the one in the testing
repository).

Is there an exit backdoor somewhere ? :)

Cheers,
Jean-Charles


On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 11:36, Attila Csipa <maemo at csipa.in.rs> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 12:17 PM, Polyvertex <polyvertex at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> After reading all related wiki pages on the subject, it seems that a
>> package can be unlocked for promotion from extras-testing to extras
>> only if :
>> * the testing package gained 10 positives votes from the community
>> * or if the package has been into extras-testing for a while (fixed
>> delay ? how much ?)
>>
>
> There are currently two options
>
> a) the package gathers 10 karma and has spent at least 10 days in
> extras-testing
> b) the package gathers 3 supertester (people with  100+ testing karma)
> thumbs ups and has spent at least 20 days in extras-testing
>
> I have personally paid a lot of attention to improve the process and hunt
> down stuck packages and their owners, so from the hundreds of packages now
> we're down to less than 50, still far from perfect, but a lot better. I will
> shortly publish some data about this changed during this year.
>
> PS If the package never gets 10 votes (or 3 tester votes) then it never gets
> unlocked. The idea behind extras-testing (and the default-on state of
> Extras) was that the community QAs the packages. I don't see automatic
> promotions in case of lack of votes as then we are serving people with
> software we can't even say anyone looked at.
>
> Best regards,
> Attila
>
>