Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] QA Team's role

[johnm@gentoo.org]

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On Sun, Feb 26, 2006 at 11:21:47PM +0000, Ciaran McCreesh <ciaranm@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Sun, 26 Feb 2006 23:11:21 +0000 johnm@gentoo.org wrote:
> | On Sun, Feb 26, 2006 at 05:22:17PM -0500, Mark Loeser
> | <halcy0n@gentoo.org> wrote:
> | > * The QA team's purpose is to provide cross-herd assistance in
> | > keeping the tree in a good state. This is done primarily by finding
> | > and pointing out issues to maintainers and, where necessary, taking
> | > direct action.
> | 
> | Please clarify "neccessary". I don't want to see repeat occurances of
> | non-issues bogging down real work. Also, please define around this a
> | clear and documented policy so when its enforced, its well defended.
> 
> The problem is... It's impossible to document every single way in which
> someone can screw up. For example, I wouldn't've thought to document
> "you should not run mkdir in global scope", because I didn't think
> anyone would be daft enough to do it. Policy *has* to rely upon the
> basic assumption that developers won't do something crazy.

yeah, thats totally understandable. Its a best-efforts thing. I just
don't want neccessary to be deemed true for something which has an
arguable point with technical merit. Blatent mkdir-esque madness would
be more black than white, and I'd hope for this to try and sanitise the
gray :)

> | > * In the case of disagreement on policy among QA members, the
> | > majority of established QA members must agree with the action.
> | 
> | Perhaps pushing it to an open forum on -dev/-core for consensus works
> | better here?
> 
> The problem with that is, it usually ends up with too many pointless
> comments from people saying how things could be fixed in the distant
> future, or whining that it isn't explicitly forbidden by policy on
> situations where the screwup was too weird to be documented previously.

This is very much a case-by-case thing. I still feel the debate should
be better answered outside of conflicting qa members.

> | > * Just because a particular QA violation has yet to cause an issue
> | > does not change the fact that it is still a QA violation.
> | 
> | Is this a statement or a policy? I assume that if this is policy the
> | non-visible issue would go about appropriate scrutany, and in turn a
> | long-term solution made in the situation where it is not easily
> | resolvable/avoidable.
> 
> This is to cover for situations where people claim that their screwups
> are ok because no-one has yet reported it as broken.

I guess that also falls under the first point, based on the quality or
vagueness of the documention :)

- John

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