On Thu, 2005-03-10 at 00:57 +0200, Alin Nastac wrote: 
> I'm only annoyed by the bad attitude of some devs who will get involved 
> only what suits them, forgetting that if they would not help, no one 
> will. Btw, what is the sense of ~arch if not "testing"? No gentooer 
> expects from a ~arch ebuild to be stable, so the sky would not fall if 
> you made a mistake and release it under this keyword. When I hear "I 
> cannot mark foo library as ~arch because I don't know how to test it" 
> smells like excuse to me.

You didn't ask for ~arch, you asked for stable.  Also, testing doesn't
mean providing something that it broken.  The testing branch is for
*ebuild testing* not package testing.  A broken package should never be
added to the tree unless it is hard masked.  You're seeming very quick
to point to others and lay blame, but I just don't think you get the
fact that there are others who take QA of their systems more seriously
than you do.

> As for QA... does anyone think we *can* have proper QA procedures, with 
> our release speed and decentralized development model? And with only ... 
> 350 devs from which God knows how many are still active?  :-D
> Who thinks that clearly doesn't have a clue what QA means. It is 
> practically impossible to test every combination of ebuilds/USE/CFLAGS 
> so all we do is a surface test, letting the burden of testing on the 
> shoulders of our users.

This is true to an extent.  I know that I test ebuilds that I put into
portage with every combination of USE flags.  I also make sure that the
thing works.  I will also file bugs to myself, if need be, and ask users
for help with testing before putting something in the tree.  Being
tested does not necessarily mean that a developer did the testing, just
that a developer verified that it was tested.  If you aren't testing the
ebuilds you're committing, then you aren't doing QA and you're leaving
it up to others to discover if something you've added is broken.  This
should happen *before* it goes in the tree, not after.

> Despite of our unorthodox development process, many people believes 
> (including me) that our distro surclass traditional ones and is 
> generally more stable (go figure!).

There have been a few snafus here and there, but generally I would agree
with you.

> Maybe I'm too exigent, but I only ask from people to do what I do : be 
> genuinely interested in helping the devs who need it. Heck, I always try 
> to help any gentooer, dev or not. We all have our little systems because 
> our predecesors have worked on it, not because they  sit down and 
> debated whether to mark foo ebuild as ~arch or not.

Trying to force your ideas of QA onto another team isn't asking someone
to help you, it is asking someone to drop their beliefs in quality to
meet your timetables.  That is counter-productive more than helpful.
You're using a lot of emotional arguments, and none technical.

Could the mips team have helped quicker?  Sure.  Maybe it would have
been beneficial for them to have simply said, "Hey.  We don't have that
hardware so we can't test it." but trying to make them look like a bunch
of lazy developers isn't helping your case much... ;]

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering - Strategic Lead/QA Manager
Games - Developer
Gentoo Linux