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[Arwed von Merkatz <v.merkatz AT gmx.net>]

On Thu, May 11, 2006 at 04:56:47PM +0200, Flavien Bridault wrote:
> Le samedi 06 mai 2006 à 16:06 -0700, Andrew a écrit :
> > On Sun, May 07, 2006 at 12:00:51AM +0200, Flavien Bridault wrote:
> > > 
> > > Thank you for your answer, this is more or less what I thought. I rather
> > > agree with that, but the only point that scares me is that it seems a
> > > *huge* work to do for few people ! Say if I'm wrong, but only Eric,
> > > Arwed and you have such an access to stable-rc/stable ? Eric and Arwed
> > > already have a lot of work with their PL/TL work and all the hard work
> > > they do in devel/test. I wonder if this is not dangerous at some point
> > > to only rely on three developers, and exclude all the others.
> > 
> > There are other people with access to stable-rc/stable. Its not just
> > the gatekeepers of stable that can have access, the distinction is
> > that gatekeepers say what can and cannot go in. Once they say it can go
> > in, anyone (with access) can execute that command. More to the point,
> > there can be a sub-team of gurus that help with the mechanics of
> > stable/stable-rc, while a few experienced people stay gatekeepers. The
> > stable-release sub-team isn't exclusive to Eric Arwed and Seth either. I
> > think the main requirement is having the necessary scm skills.
> 
> Currently I have tons of bugs from promotheus, I try to fix them while
> they arrive. But the list becomes to be a real mess. I can't see
> directly what is fixed and not fixed, since we only have NEW, ASSIGNED
> and FIXED... All the fixes are allowed to be integrated in stable-rc (so
> marked ASSIGNED as well as not-fixed bugs I'm taking care) but none have

You can use the flags to filter, e.g. filter out all bugs with a "fixed
in lesser branch" flag in your bugzilla query for to-fix bugs.

> been integrated in stable-rc ! Some bugs have been fixed several weeks
> ago. So that's why I primarily thought Eric, Arwed and Seth need some
> help to perform those tasks.

With all those prometheus bugs the workload is sure quite a bit higher
than it used to be. Gatekeeping seems to work out alright, but
integrations take more time.

> So, I don't know if I have the necessary scm skills, but I'm sure I can
> learn... Could I candidate to be part of this sub-team ? Of course I
> would not be offended if you think I'm not good enough or whatever
> else... ;-)

The required scm skills aren't that much. Mostly figuring out what
changesets exactly need to be integrated as bugfix, ignoring any
unrelated changes (like keyword additions, version updates, etc.).
I asked on a couple of bugs, where an integration was requested, to get
the p4 change number/git commit id that does the bugfix added as a
comment to simplify this (also added to the wiki page[1]).
If you want to help (and can live with being yelled at for doing broken
things ;-), I don't see a reason why not. Eric, Seth, what do you think?

[1] http://wiki.sourcemage.org/Stable_Grimoire_Bug_Handling

> > I think the main place more help is needed is in fixing the bugs 
> > themselves.
> > Once they're fixed the process of reviewing and moving those changes to
> > stable/stable-rc is comparatively a small amount of extra work.
> > 
> > Lastly, as the bug backlog decreases, stable releases can be more
> > frequent. This release cycle is long because the last one is long and
> > there was more churn in test (and thus more bugs introduced). If this
> > cycle is shorter, then the next one can be even shorter, and so on. It'll
> > happen gradually, but the amount of work in pulling fixes into stable
> > ought to decrease over time. Of course, the best way to help that system
> > out is to focus on fixing as many bugs as possible :-)
> > 
> > -Andrew
> > 
> -- 
> Flavien Bridault
> 
> Disk, Graphics, Graphics-libs sections Guru
> Source Mage GNU/Linux - http://www.sourcemage.org
> 
> irc: vlaaad
> jabber: vlaaad AT amessage.be



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-- 
Arwed v. Merkatz                              Source Mage GNU/Linux developer
                                                    http://www.sourcemage.org