REVU: Automated Package Checks

[Scott Kitterman]

On Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:49:56 +0100 Kjeldgaard Morten <mok at bioxray.au.dk> 
wrote:
>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.

Agreed.

>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.

Thank you for this and I quite understand.

>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.
>
I do not think this is a good idea.

I think it's better in the short run if we all step up and do a bit and in 
the long run if we figure a way to point new contributor more strongly 
towards fixing what we already have.

Scott K

P.S. I'll sign up for doing a bit of it.