On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 2:30 PM, Peter Stuge <pe...@stuge.se> wrote: > I expect that anyone and everyone who contribute to any open source > project will do their damndest to contribute only "perfect" work.
Setting aside issues of tone, I want to touch on the more direct issue of "quality" and "perfection." I do think that most developers aim for high quality, but quality means something different to everybody. Quality could be: 1. Having a newer package in the tree, perhaps with resolved upstream issues. 2. Having more integration testing. 3. Having good documentation. 4. Having good communications to the end users about impending changes. 5. Being better integrated with other projects (such as chromium in this case). 6. Maintainability of the actual ebuild code. 7. Compliance with formal policies. All of those have a connotation of quality, and they are at odds with each other. The more time you spend on any of them the less time you have to spend on others. Complying with any of #2-7 takes time, and thus conflicts with #1. I think we should have a pool of developer proxies who are interested in supporting proxy maintenance. I don't think we get anywhere by punishing them when the inevitable mistake occurs. However, we also don't get anywhere by turning a blind eye to real issues that repeatedly come up. It sounds like there are some of those with ICU. I don't think we need drastic action. Maybe we just need a proxy dev who can be a little more closely associated with the package so they're aware of the issues that routinely come up and can help prevent them. Maybe Arfrever can work a little more closely with some of the other teams. I do think we need reasonable quality policies so that we're all on the same page. Testing packages should at least be confirmed as generally working and free of obvious problems. Stable packages should have been in testing for 30 days. Packages with highly impactful changes should have news items before being unmasked or stabilized. And so on. They don't have to be out-of-hand, and we don't have to shoot our wounded either. Rich
