Summary from UDD meeting 2011-03-23

[Robert Collins]

On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 9:00 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> I do agree with Scott that import reliability is really critical to adoption.
> You can't use UDD if the branch is out of date!  BFBIP seems like a step after
> getting wide adoption of 'bzr branch' instead of 'apt-get source'.

They seem pretty complementary to me: I mean, if you can push(*) to
build, thats removes a manual step from the pipeline : its a pretty
significant change.

We have in the past fallen into a trap of aiming for 100% in each step
*before* we move onto the next one. That means we're well past the
point of getting a net benefit (think 80-20 rule) by the time we start
moving on. These import problems have a viciously long tail : isn't it
better to be making things a lot better *most* of the time?

I acknowledge the psychological impact of 'if it doesn't work always
its hard to remember' - but we're already well past the common working
set of any one developer, and Martin isn't suggesting that imports be
abandoned, just that closing the loop is *as* important as improving
the import story.

-Rob

(*) By which I mean some command that generates a validator, signs it,
does $whatever with it.