[Mageia-dev] please stop doing "bugs" for updating magia 1

Wed Jan 11 20:10:02 CET 2012

Le mercredi 11 janvier 2012 à 11:24 -0500, Juan Luis Baptiste a écrit :
+> On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 3:43 AM, Florian Hubold <doktor5000 at arcor.de> wrote:
+> > Well, 2) and 3) are not valid reasons here, because backports should get
+> > a similar amount of QA testing as normal update candidates, and for
+> > the updates policy require a bugreport for validation through QA.
+> 
+> I think this is unrealistic in practice. For updates, QA will be
+> testing one bug fix,  with a backport you will have dozens or more new
+> features to test, you can't expect for QA to test all of them to be
+> able to give the OK, more if they even don't use the backported app in
+> a daily basis. Testing of a backport has to be more relaxed and
+> compromise to test some basic stuff like that it installs and starts
+> correctly, maybe the package maintainer can give some hints on what
+> else to test, but the rest we will have to trust in the maintainer's
+> judgement.
+ 
+So trusting and having bugs are totally unrelated. And if you doubt that
+bugs appear, just see our bugzilla.
+We trust upstream ( most of them ), and yet there is bugs.
+
+> If you think that all version backports should be tested in the same
+> way as updates by QA, then all versions upgrades in cauldron should be
+> tested by QA before pushing them to the BS right ? 
+
+No, they should be tested before being put in the stable release. And
+that's exactly what we do by freezing and testing before release.
+
+> why risk for a bug
+> on a program when updating to a new mga version and not when doing a
+> backport ?, it's exactly the same situation.
+
+That was already extensively discussed in the past, but if we do the
+same stuff than in Mandriva, we will end with the same result than in
+Mandriva.
+- people don't test backports, because that's not mandatory 
+=> some bugs slips.
+
+then users start to say "do not use backport if you do not know what you
+do or if you are not expert, because I had $problem once". With time,
+such advice start to impermeate the community, and people start to
+simply not use backports.
+
+Worst, some people just do cherry picking of backports, and take one or
+two or them, and this result in wierd bugs with 2 effects :
+- we lose time
+- user think we are doing a bad quality distribution, because he has a
+mix that he is the only one in the world to have. Non technical users
+tell him he should not mix ( and they are right ), and so he start to
+feel bad because we gave him something that do not ork. Some users also
+end with system unsupported, so no security update, nor bugfixes.
+
+In the end, users complain that distribution is broken, and that impact
+our image. We cannot tell "do not mix", because we cannot tell them to
+update backports without fear, as that would be lying. And in the end,
+saying "this is not supported, but we offer to you" is just sending a
+confusing message.
+
+If we start to give low quality stuff as Mageia, people will just think
+Mageia is low quality.
+
+-- 
+Michael Scherer
+
+