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sm-discuss - Re: [SM-Discuss] process for getting bugfixes and security updates into stable grimoire

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  • From: seth AT swoolley.homeip.net
  • To: Flavien Bridault <vlaaad AT sourcemage.org>
  • Cc: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] process for getting bugfixes and security updates into stable grimoire
  • Date: Sat, 6 May 2006 12:21:42 -0700

On Sat, May 06, 2006 at 12:42:03PM +0200, Flavien Bridault wrote:
> Just a small question (maybe silly :-/ ), I agree that we need
> gatekeepers to grant the integration in stable-rc; but do you really
> need them to perform the integration ? Can't we trust the maintainer to
> do that ?

No, we cannot trust them, for a few reasons.

I've seen too many bad integrations to not trust people to do p4 diff
(or similar) to double-check the integration.

This is more true for stable than for stable-rc, but I would still like
to see control on stable-rc. 'advisory closed' just isn't hard enough
for me, especially when I want to know of _every_ integrate to
stable-rc and know that the people doing it know what they are doing. I
explain this more in response to your next question.

> Or is this technically to much different from an integration
> from devel to test ?

It's not much technically different, even though there are technical
differences in layout (since we include the version). The most
problematic part is that integrates to stable-rc and stable often
involve cherry-picking. I don't really want to leave that to just any
guru. Our grimoire structure is complex enough now with FUNCTIONS,
etc., that it's a non-trivial operation. I want people who know to
integrate the smallest or least intrusive change and can understand the
ramifications of their action on the whole. Early gurus don't
necessarily get this. I want to open up guruing in the trunk, but keep
stable release candidates and release branches to be tightly qa'd. If
we let any guru access stable-rc, we have to be more careful who we let
have access to test (the trunk).

Moreover, while stable-rc might not seem so important to have tight
control over, the fact is that once stable-rc is branched, we start
testing immediately on the entire thing. That means that at that point
anything integrated after testing has to be re-tested or limited such
that testing can be encapsulated to the specific change (unit tested).
Some changes cannot be well unit tested and that's why we need tight
control over this process. Unless we want to extend our stable-rc
testing to be atomic against any change (making global retesting
requisite), we cannot give just anybody access.

Remember, once code enters the QA process, the less developers can
mingle with it, the cleaner the final output will be. This of course is
weighed against flexibility, but with each ounce of flexibility we add,
we need to add a pound of process to account for that.

> I could even imagine (but maybe we don't have the technology yet ;-) )
> to allow a temporary access to the spell in stable-rc once the
> gatekeeper granted the integration.

Even if we had this, for the above reason, particularly with regard to
testing processes, I would be uncomfortable with it.

Seth




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