Request For Candidates: Application Review Board

Rick Spencer rick.spencer at canonical.com
Fri Aug 13 22:21:57 BST 2010


On Tue, 2010-08-10 at 10:47 +0200, Michael Bienia wrote:
> On 2010-08-09 17:53:09 -0400, Elliot Murphy wrote:
> > However, I believe the new process will be easier to market to
> > application developers that we definitely need to be winning over, and
> > the flowchart (subjectively, when I imagine explaining this to an app
> > developer that I'm trying to win over) feels less clunky than going
> > into the dev release and then immediately into backports. It also
> > prevents the app developer from needing to run the development release
> > of Ubuntu, instead they can stay on a stable foundation and focus
> > exclusively on building the app without worrying about the platform
> > shifting beneath their feet from day to day. I love running the dev
> > version of Ubuntu, but I've seen it stress out upstream app developers
> > over and over when they just want to focus on building their app
> > without thinking about libraries or desktop changing underneath them.
This point about libraries is a key point. Applications that change
underlying libraries will not be eligible for new apps. Thus, if they
don't work, they just don't work, they won't break other components. At
UDS we called these "leaf node" applications.

Also, applications that are too complicated to assess easily can be
rejected for that reason alone. So medium and large apps will probably
not be appropriate, since they will take too much effort to review, and
would be more appropriate for universe or such.

These are two ways that the review process will be much "lighter". 

> 
> Some points are not yet clear to me in this process:
> - will those packages end in the "main" archive or a seperate one (like
>   "partner")? or will they stay in a PPA?
It's a separate archive just for this.

> - how do updates of those packages work? which process is to follow?
>   this one or SRU or a different one?
If you want to update an app that is already in this repo, you go
through the process again, the updated app needs to be re-reviewed.

> - who is responsible for the forward porting of the application to the
>   next Ubuntu release? And will this happen while the next Ubuntu
>   release is still in development or only once it got released and the
>   app developer re-applies to get his app added to this new Ubuntu
>   release too?

I answered this in a different reply, but I'll copy my answer here for
completeness.
<copy>
I don't think anyone is specifically responsible for ensuring that
applications go into the current development release.. Maverick will be
the first release where we are using this process, so we will learn a
lot and tweak the process as needed to improve it. For example, if a
path that includes both the stable release and the development release
is deemed required, we can add such as a path.
 
It's not necessarily granted that an application written for a stable
release is relevant for future releases. For example, an application
"Super Bowl 2010" may only be relevant for the 10.10 release. Or perhaps
the application provides functionality which is built into another core
app in the development version, etc...
</copy>
> 
> And do I understand it correctly that applications which need yet
> unpackaged libraries are not eligible for this process?
In general I assume that would be correct.

Cheers, Rick




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