ARB Review

[Jonathan Carter (highvoltage)]

Hi Jono!

On 11/04/2012 01:57, Jono Bacon wrote:
> What concerns me is that I suspect that if the ARB places the same
> level of exhaustive assessment as a core-dev/motu, the assessment
> process will be further delayed and contribute to these bottlenecks. I
> just think this is about finding a good balance that is efficient yet
> safe.

Thanks for sharing your concerns.

For what it's worth, Andrew and I have set up a weekly timeslot where 
we'll be looking at ARB packages together (starting next week Tuesday). 
I'll probably set up another slot like this with another ARB member 
(most likely Stéphane). That might help the current package flow 
problems somewhat. As with anything, if you don't make the time, you 
won't have it :)

I really think that the idea of the arb-helpers team is a good idea and 
quite frankly, I'm probably better suited to be on something like that 
than the arb-board.

By the way, I'd like you (for my own education) to expand on what's 
exhaustive about the assessment on the packaging assessments. While I 
fully understand the requirements and needs for having a smooth 
application submission process, it's really just impossible to accept 
packages that have problems like the following:
  * Submission has no licensing information
  * Submission is just a .jar file
  * Submission isn't suitable under Ubuntu CoC (which include porn 
viewers, etc)
  * Submission requires non-free software to build (additionally, we 
actually require software to build with tools already in the Ubuntu 
archives)
  * Submission requires maintainer scripts for installation, or needs a 
daemon, or makes other system modification (like the grub themers, 
tweak-tools, etc)

These responses are really the most common responses to submissions: 
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AppReviewBoard/Review/Responses

Now to get the queue down we *could* just reject all the packages that 
doesn't meet those criteria, but I don't think that advances the goal of 
this project. It's probably better to help the people who submitted 
their apps to do a proper submission.

I look forward to hearing any suggestions or ideas for improvement you 
might have!

-Jonathan