SRU policy for universe

[Jordan Mantha]

Stefan Potyra wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> given the long waiting times [1], until a proposed update even lands 
> in -proposed, I must admit that the current sru policy for universe is a 
> failure. Thus I'd like to start a discussion how to improve it.

Thanks Stefan, and for your work on MOTU SRU

> My proposal is, that the motu-sru team should be able to manage the -proposed 
> queue for universe packages. The impact would be quite reduced waiting times. 
> However I don't know if thats currently possible with lp.

I'm pretty sure this isn't possible. We have brought up MOTU archive
administration before and it poses problems for LP/Canonical.

> Other options are (also I don't know if these are possible with lp as is):
> * motu-sru can do uploads to -proposed that won't land in any queue

This would require motu-sru to do more checking than originally
proposed. Originally motu-sru was just going to check the
sanity/severity of the SRU, correct? If in practice you guys are test
building and going through a full sponsorship review then that's fine.

> * any motu can do uploads to -proposed that won't land in any queue, motu-sru 
> would do the verification which is now done by archive-admins, once the 
> package is already in -proposed. Note that this might backfire, because it 
> implies somewhat to allow everything in the first place and remove the bad 
> stuff then, whereas we currently queue all stuff and allow only the good 
> pieces.

Why couldn't motu-sru do the "archive verification" before it's uploaded?

Overall, I feel our SRU policy has gone on a pendulum swing. We started
out with really no policy, if a MOTU felt an important bug needed fixing
he'd check it by somebody and then upload to -updates. Now we have this
super rigid process that is taking way too long and has an awful lot of
hoops to jump through. I thought the whole idea of -proposed was that we
could upload, more or less, as we did before, but that -proposed offered
a buffer or DMZ area for testing before it finally goes off to -updates.
I really don't understand why uploading to -proposed should have any
more archive admin interaction then uploading to feisty now. As it
stands, a non-MOTU need explicit approval (read waiting in a queue) from
a MOTU, 3 MOTU SRU members, and an archive admin, just to get into
-proposed! I would think getting a package into -proposed should be
fairly easy and certainly shouldn't be creating backlog for busy people.

-Jordan