Request For Candidates: Application Review Board

[Clint Byrum]

On Aug 13, 2010, at 12:39 PM, Rick Spencer wrote:

> On Fri, 2010-08-13 at 15:23 -0400, Andrew SB wrote:
>> I applaud the effort to make contributing to Ubuntu easier for all
>> different kinds of people, but I still haven't heard an answer to one
>> of Scott's earlier questions that has nagged me as well.
>> 
>> Who is responsible for pushing these new apps to the development
>> release? As Scott said, "Once the next release hits they won't be in
>> the current release anymore because we skipped the part where we get
>> the packages into the development release." Are we creating a
>> permanent split in the archive with two completely different
>> processes?
> 
> This process does represent a significant change in the way users
> related to application in Ubuntu.
> 
> 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.
> 

PPA's make this really, really easy for the developer to handle themselves.

Essentially, the dev will just copy their package to the dev release, and
it should build for them. If it fails to build, they'll hear about it from
the PPA system. If it doesnt' work, then they'll hear about it from their
users. It might even make sense to have something that essentially does the
copying automatically for applications that have been added to software
center.

Now, if somebody in MOTU or Debian thinks "whoa that app is unbelievably
cool", then they can use their position as a DD or MOTU/Ubuntu Core Dev
and get it into the archive after having reviewed it for the kinds of
things an app review board doesn't necessarily need to take the time to
consider.

I see this process as a lightweight check to make sure the postinst file
doesn't run 'rm -rf /', not to make sure that it is up to the standards
of Ubuntu.