Proposing MIR process simplification

[Bryce Harrington]

On Tue, Jan 05, 2010 at 06:14:25PM +0000, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 04, 2010 at 12:41:21PM +0100, Martin Pitt wrote:
> > I prepared a new process documentation at
> > 
> >   https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MainInclusionProcess/Proposed
> > 
> 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".

I agree the MIR process could benefit from simplification, but I don't
think eliminating the need for the wiki page really helps *that* much.
Actually, I personally find the boilerplate text useful as a checklist
to work through, marking items off as I do them.  I'd probably end up
doing all the same work if we were doing them in LP vs. wiki.

Most of the "bureaucracy" comes not so much from having to write
documentation (I usually just cut-and-paste from another MIR anyway),
but rather from all the various steps you have to go through.

A lot of those steps are things like looking for keywords on certain
websites, or looking for specific types of files in a package.  These
would be relatively straightforward to do programmatically.

I only do around 2-3 MIRs per release; not enough to justify putting
time into tool development, but enough to have an opinion.  ;-)

My opinion is that we really ought to do this as a CGI form.  Given a
package name (and alternate names), it should try to do as much as it
can itself, and then prompt the user for any discrepancies or any steps
that cannot be done programmatically.  When the user is done, they click
submit and it would automatically creates a properly formatted MIR LP
bug report, subscribing the correct teams and so on.

Here's a really rough mockup of what I have in mind (type in package
'foo' and hit go):
 http://www2.bryceharrington.org:8080/cgi-bin/mir.cgi

Bryce