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

Wed Jan 11 21:10:01 CET 2012

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 2:10 PM, Michael Scherer <misc at zarb.org> wrote:
+> Le mercredi 11 janvier 2012 à 11:24 -0500, Juan Luis Baptiste a écrit :
+>
+> 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.
+
+No, they're not totally unrelated when we don't have the man power to
+do through QA on every package, we need to trust on the packager (and
+upstream of course) that he did his best to test the new version
+without expecting him to have tested all the new features, Or do you
+expect that a QA member get a list of all the new features of a
+backport and start testing them one by one ? that's what I call
+unrealistic in practice.
+
+>
+>> 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.
+>
+
+Of course but again, we can't test *all* the new features of *all* the
+programs that are going to a new release, we do our best for most of
+them. Critical components like installer, kernel, drak* tools, etc
+need more testing and that's where (our very small team) QA should
+spend their time after a freeze. The rest we have to do our best to
+test after each version update of a package.
+
+>> 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.
+>
+
+Of course and that will also happen when updating packages during the
+development cycle of cauldron. Yes, we do freeze to be able to test,
+but we cant test every new feature of all applications. We test the
+most critical stuff which we can't risk to have bugs (and they also
+slip some times).
+
+>
+> 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.
+>
+
+Users will complain anyway, they will complain because there aren't
+backports of their favorite application or because a backported
+version has a bug, so we need to find a balance between those two.
+Expecting to do the same amount of testing to a backport will put too
+much burden on QA and will make the process of backporting a version
+too slow for the users. So we need to have more lax tests for
+backports, enough to guarantee that the application works for it's
+main features and doesn't put too much burnden on QA, than for updates
+which need to gurantee that a bug is really fixed. How to define which
+should be those tests ? that's the issue as I see it. We could have a
+"backports team" thought, that would do QA for backports without
+taking time from the updates QA team...
+
+Also the other problem is the third-party repos which brings lots of
+problems because packages are of low quality and don't follow our
+standards, and if we don't have our own backports and move fast enough
+users will continue to use those third-party repos, which will also
+bring the "Mageia is of low quality" problem.
+
+
+-- 
+Juancho
+