Proposal for revised REVU workflow

[Morten Kjeldgaard]

On 25/01/2009, at 05.39, charliej wrote:

> Two quick questions
>
> 1.  Would anyone be able to "review" and leave "comments" on packages
> (as it is now), or would reviewing packages be a MOTU only activity?

The reviewing and commenting procedures would not be changed. I think  
that REVU generally is very useful and works very well as a reviewing  
tool. It is certainly the best solution of any Linux distro I am aware  
of.

For users of REVU, there would be mainly two differences from the  
present situation. Firstly, the page with the long list of packages  
that we have now would be partitioned into several pages, according to  
how far you've gotten in the process. Packages will spend the longest  
time on the "In Process" page, and so the user experience would be  
exactly like now, except the view would not be cluttered by other  
packages in different stages of development.

The "In Process"  and  "Advocacy pages would still have a "needs- 
review" and "needs-work" section. Non-MOTUs will still be able to  
comment, in fact it's a great help when people do that.

> 2.  If I read your proposal correctly REVU would only be open for
> uploads from the beginning of the release cycle to feature freeze?

Exactly, that's the second difference users will experience in their  
use of REVU.  NEW packages that users want to have reviewed will enter  
the "Unreviewed" page. So yes, a reasonable way to use this incoming  
page would be to close it at Feature Freeze like you say, or perhaps  
slightly before. But the MOTU team could also choose to close it for  
say, a release cycle, if they want to focus on another effort during  
that time.

However, while the close is in effect, uploads will still be possible  
for packages "In Process", so the reviewing does not stop.

I think the Ubuntu community will accept that solution, especially  
because people can "sort of" have their package in Ubuntu via the  
PPAs, to the benefit of themselves and their friends. And the  
community can also maintain their packages freely in bazaar on LP.


I  hope it's clearer now!

Cheers,
Morten