[maemo-developers] Package promoting

[From: Polyvertex]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 12:38, Attila Csipa <maemo at csipa.in.rs> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Polyvertex <polyvertex at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Indeed, I own a stuck package :)
>
>
> I am, in a weird way, happy that people are now complaining about packages
> being stuck for 15 days - as bad as it sounds, there were times where most
> of the packages spent months in testing without hopes of ever getting
> promoted. Now, only to get the average closer 10 and all will be dandy !
>
> On a side note - I checked out you package, it already has 3 tester votes,
> so (unless somebody finds a blocker) it will be unlocked for promotion in
> about 5 days even if nobody else votes on it (but if they do, you get
> unlocked as soon as you reach 10 votes).

I am not complaining because my testing package is stuck since 2 weeks
and if you look at the package events list, you will see that the
*only* version which has been promoted to extras has indeed spent more
than 2 months in testing. But I do complain about the too high
constraint level of the promoting process for the developers *and* the
users.

I think the maintainer should always have the ability to promote the
package to extras by himself and take the risk of being under fire
from users if he promote a very bad/bugged release and did not took
enough time to resolve issues. This may also be added to the Karma
system if this is not already done.

>
>>
>> Is there an exit backdoor somewhere ? :)
>>
>
> A secret weapon is in the making - KISStester, which would allow easier
> feedback for users, and it also acts as a REMINDER for people who are using
> software that is in dire need of testing (the problem is that people
> *download* things from testing but forget/can't be bothered to come BACK to
> vote on it).

Well... As both of us said : most of the time, users don't vote. This
is why the promoting process is way too constraining : it does not
take users behavior into account at all...

Cheers,
Jean-Charles