On Thu, 8 Jan 2004 19:01:11 +0100, Ronny Buchmann wrote:
My only other complaint, and it really is more of a suggestion, is that it would be *really* nice if the easy things (like "does this package build") were automated. It would be *really* nice if the automatically-built packages were put into a repository (accompanied by USE AT YOUR OWN RISK warnings) that reviewers could download and test from. At that point it becomes almost zero effort for interested people (like me) to install a package on a test box and let it run for a while.
IMHO this auto-built repository is the only testing repository needed. People could test packages from there and than vote for inclusion in "stable" repo. This would simplify QA in a great way.
Except that it doesn't make technical reviews superfluous. To build a binary package you could also use a tool like checkinstall and be done. But for a src.rpm to be maintainable or "correct", a second or even third pair of eyes sometimes does wonders. Once a package has been published in "stable", it may be too late [or unclean] to fix some issues that have been missed by testing prebuilt binaries only.
The difference between "testing" and "unstable" is far from obvious and two testing repositories are really not needed.
Agreed, except that the split between testing and unstable is a bit more cautious than putting software which is known to crash randomly into "testing".