Proposing MIR process simplification

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Mon, Jan 04, 2010 at 12:41:21PM +0100, Martin Pitt wrote:
> both from a reporter's and from a reviewer's point of view my
> perception is that the MIR process involves too much needless
> bureaucracy. What we really want is reporters to go through the
> checklist and discuss the violations of the MIR requirement standards
> in the bug report, not write lengthy wiki pages with boilerplate text
> (especially not for trivial packages like perl bindings).
> 
> So I propose to drop the wiki page reports entirely and just use MIR
> bugs, and discuss the package problems there (as we already do) and
> reduce a MIR to the rationale and a confirmation 
> 
>   I checked UbuntuMainInclusionRequirements and those were the problems:
>     - ...
> 
> or
> 
>   I checked that the package meets the UbuntuMainInclusionRequirements.
> 
> I prepared a new process documentation at
> 
>   https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MainInclusionProcess/Proposed
> 
> Once it's agreed upon and moves to MainInclusionProcess, the wiki
> template [1] should be dropped entirely. I just edited the requirement
> checklist [2] to be up to date wrt. [1].
> 
> What do you think? Feedback from u-devel@ (in particular from people
> who often write MIRs) is appreciated!

I'm all for less paperwork, and eliminating the wiki page seems sensible.

I think there's value in confirming that the checklist was followed, though.
There is a big difference in transparency and commitment in stating the
facts (i.e. which requirements were met and how), rather than just saying "I
checked that it meets the requirements".  This shouldn't be any more work,
since they need to follow the checklist anyway.  Is there any harm in
stating that explicitly in the bug report?

-- 
 - mdz