SRUs and Notifications: Speeding up the SRU Process

[Simon Quigley]

Hello Stable Release Updates Team!

Over the course of the Ubuntu Summit, I attended a talk by Andreas regarding 
"the perfect SRU." I was incredibly excited to attend this, so I could ask 
clarifying questions about specific elements of the process.

I brought up an idea that Robie suggested I forward here, which is regarding 
older SRUs. A major point in the presentation was regarding SRUs which aren't 
verified in time. Often times, despite our best intentions, Launchpad bug 
notifications get missed. The vast majority of the time (from what I'm hearing), 
a simple ping is all that's needed to progress the SRU and get it ready for GA.

My suggestion is this: let's have nag emails like Britney gives out. I know what 
you're thinking: more emails are a bad idea. Usually I would agree. That being 
said, valid Stable Release Updates have an inherent value to the end user. These 
are the updates which make the experience better, align actual functionality 
with expectations in a non-intrusive way, and keep the user secure. I would 
argue email updates around SRUs are *more* important than Britney notifications, 
simply in the way of user impact.

*I propose that some piece of tooling [standalone, or I'm taking suggestions for 
existing places] shall notify both the uploader/sponsor and the bug reporter via 
email once a week until the SRU is fully verified, once accepted in -proposed.*

This will have a wider impact on the velocity of SRUs. In the short-term, this 
means more work for the SRU team, given everyone is now reminded of their SRUs 
(and thus, a lot will come in at once). This will eventually average out (I 
estimate over the course of a month) to the point where we have a minimal 
"pending SRUs" table, and higher velocity for SRUs, benefiting both our users 
and developers.

Please let me know what your thoughts are, otherwise I will get started on some 
code.

Thank you for your time,
-- 
Simon Quigley
simon at tsimonq2.net
tsimonq2 on LiberaChat and OFTC
@tsimonq2:linuxdelta.com on Matrix
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