Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: automatically mailing people on pkgcheck problems with their packages

[Ian Stakenvicius <axs@gentoo.org>]

> On Dec 6, 2015, at 11:52 AM, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
>> On Sun, Dec 6, 2015 at 11:09 AM, Michael Orlitzky <mjo@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> On 12/06/2015 11:00 AM, Michał Górny wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Of course. Add the commit author, too: I want to know if I break someone
>>>> else's package.
>>> 
>>> So far, can't do that since we don't know which commit exactly broke. I
>>> don't want to do any heuristics that could blame the wrong person.
>> 
>> Is the testing performed per-push rather than per-commit? Either way, I
>> would like to get a notification that something broke, even if it wasn't
>> my commit at fault. Just change the word "blame" to "alert" so no one
>> feels slandered.
> 
> ++
> 
> This isn't about shaming people.  It is about alerting that the tree
> is broken.  I think we can agree that when packages don't build it is
> a problem, and it won't fix itself.
> 
> How many commits typically go by in-between checks?  Would it be
> practical to just alert any commit author in that time range?  Sure,
> it would generate a bit of spam, but:
> 
> 1.  Better to get problems fixed sooner than later.
> 2.  The overall improved attention to QA will hopefully reduce the
> error rate and thus make the number of emails regulate themselves.
> 
> One of the first steps towards reducing errors is to increase their visibility.
> 

Couldn't we just alert the people listed in the metadata for the packages affected?  Even if it wasn't them that caused the breakage, aren't they ultimately responsible for making sure the package works?  They could ping the actual committer...