[csw-maintainers] Call for testers

[Sebastian Kayser]

Philip Brown wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 07:23:36PM +0100, Dagobert Michelsen wrote:
>> there are packages piling up in testing/ and there seem to be
>> only very little feedback.

No feedback may sometimes be a good sign. Is there any way to track the
number of downloads for a particular package from testing/?

>> How about a "call for testers" on the main page?

Do you mean testers as in people who specifically test packages inside
out? Or just a call to get more people to install packages from testing/
and provide feedback in case they notice something strange?

Is testing/ mentioned on the website at all? How about a small paragraph
about it on the user guide page [1] under the section "Release Program"?

That way users could also be made aware of it and i suppose there are
always people out there who are interested in testing out the latest
"stuff".

>> Having professional testers would both help
>> maintainers and improve quality.

What about doing it like Debian does it? They have three branches:
stable, testing, unstable. Development happens in unstable and packages
move to testing after a non-bug-encountered grace period has passed.

Developers (maintainers) usually subscribe to unstable and update
frequently. Thus, the chance that someone hits a hidden bug is
increased. Experimental users can also subscribe to unstable (which
would be testing/ in our case) if they like bleeding edge.

Does pkg-get/pkgutil offer an easy way to blend in the testing/ tree so
that testing/ wouldn't need to be a full release? I imagine something
like implicitly using the pkgutil -t option set to the testing tree all
the time.

>> Another suggestion: since we have a "special, custom" testing page  
>> rather than just a raw inventory thingie..

Do you mean this one [2]? Hadn't heard of it before. Is it linked from
anywhere else on the page?

Could you have a look at the package feed on the page. From what i see
the last package in the feed is from Dec 12, but there are already more
recent packages in testing/.

> Also note that if you decide to do this, it should track both the filename,
> AND THE CHECKSUM, since in theory, maintainers could put a newer version of
> a package, with the exact same filename, in testing.

This would not only be interesting for the feedback, but also for
pkg-get / pkgutil.  Can they be forced to install a package from testing
when the filename and version remain identical (which is per default the
case for GAR builds done on the same day)?

So far i pkgrm'ed the affected package and then installed the new
version. But maybe there is something like a --reinstall option?

Sebastian

[1] http://opencsw.org/userguide
[2] http://mirror.opencsw.org/testing.html