REVU: Automated Package Checks

[Kjeldgaard Morten]

On 23/01/2009, at 00.30, Nathan Handler wrote:

> For those of you who might be unaware, I have taken over Siegfried
> Gevatter's (RainCT) role of REVU Coordinator. For the past few days, I
> have been thinking about something, and I want to get the opinions of
> the rest of the people in the community before taking any action.

... and kudos to you for taking on this task, Nathan!

I am not sure that more automated package analysis well help much. The  
uploaders already have Lintian and other tools at their disposal, yet  
the fact is that many packages have lots of Lintian issues remaining  
on the binary packages.

When people upload to REVU, they have read all the guides and  
tutorials (at least some have) and what they really want is a human  
being to look at it, and to get advice on what to do. Many see the  
warnings by the various tools, but simply don't know what to do about  
them. Or, they feel unsure on where to go and don't want to spend a  
lot of time going in the wrong direction.

The REAL problem with REVU is that not enough MOTUs care about it to  
enable us to keep up with the demand for reviews.

IF we want this interaction with the community, this way of meeting  
and training new developers, we really have to do more!

If we don't, we should consider closing down REVU. Personally, I don't  
think it's a good idea, but it is even worse having a queue of over a  
hundred packages where uploaders are waiting months between review  
cycles! That is detrimental to our standing respect in the community.  
The large number of packages in the "needs-work" section is also  
testiment to the number of uploaders who have given up, and every one  
of those is a potentially useful contibutor lost. Those still hopeful  
of getting their packages processed generally re-upload quite quickly,  
and so their package can wait for another month or two. This is BAD.

As someone who has been doing lots of REVUs this cycle, it is quite  
depressing seeing that no matter how hard you work, the list keeps  
growing, and the packages you advocate do not attract a second advocate.

As a temporary measure, to get rid of this long queue, perhaps we  
should only require one advocate for an upload? This is what Debian  
does, and I'd like to suggest a discussion of that on the next MOTU  
meeting.

Cheers,
Morten

-- 
Morten Kjeldgaard <mok0 at ubuntu.com>
Ubuntu MOTU Developer
GPG Key ID: 404825E7