Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

So apparently different parts of the community are having problems with the maemo.org infrastructure and policies? I'm starting this thread to collect the issues in a single place in hope of finding solutions. So in additon to the problem please also tell how you see it should be fixed or do you see a way to work around the problem. If you're just going to bash nokia, nemein, whoever go post somewhere else, please.

One of the problems is the community QA queue that has been stuck for ages (oldest packages are about a year old). I quickly went through the list yesterday and the situation seems to be (please correct me if I'm wrong) caused by multiple factors: 1) lack of testers 2) lack of automated promotion system 3) communication problems. The combination of the problems makes the community QA pretty much a waste of time.

Personally I'd start with something we can do without paid help as in go though the packages that can be promoted (do what the community QA is supposed to do) all clean the queue. After this it gets a bit more difficult without help from people maintaining the infra. But if we provide them a list of actions needed for each of the packages stuck in the queue instead of demanding root access this thing just might get solved. In any case the problem won't go away just be talking.

As a long term solution I'd like to see a fremantle target in OBS (apps.formeego.org). This would solve most of the problems (except the lack of testers). But this is also something that needs help from the maintainers. On the other hand this might turn out to be a waste of time since many of the fremantle packages are orphaned and would require work to move stuff into OBS. In the end of the day it comes down to how many peolpe are left that are willing to do work for fremantle stuff. This might phase out just like the older maemo devices did with only a couple of people interested in them. If that's the case it's not worth the effort.

One solution is simply to trash the community QA process by letting extas rot in peace and only use extras-devel and -testing where testing would the "stable" repo. this is the way out if it's not possible to get the automated promotion system, etc. working. This would be the solution requiring least work and pretty much already is the current practice.

As I said in the mainling list I'm volunteering myself to be one of the people who goes through the QA queue. I'd like to see at least a two more people doing the same. These decisions can't be made by a single person and it doesn't make sense to much before we get people to commit to put some effort into some solution. Also it would help in making the call to get an answer to what people maintainging the infra are planning/allowed to do.

So what do you say? Do we try to resurrect the community QA process, trash it or do something else?

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

An "on-device" client for voting and commenting, still subject to having a garage account, could probably help the QA process.
I've hardly ever voted for a community project in devel (shame on me), if only because I don't know which programs on my device are in devel and wich are already in extra.
This client could be shipped with CSSU for example, to have a broad and yet selected range of users.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

The problem with blocked packages was discussed in this thread.

There was also further discussion in the testing squad mailing list.

We asked to Nemein to arrange any kind of meeting to try to address the problems and discuss our proposals and see how could them be feasible. You can see that in the mailing list thread.

No answer was received. No I have asked to Quim twice to see if he can help us to approach the administrators in order to fix the issues.

There is no more need for discussion on this topic. The testers team and the Council only need a contact point to start addressing the problem.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

Yep. we can continue there. I started this thread to collect the different issues around here to give them more visibility.

With 4 people taking part in the discussion that supports my theory of general lack of interests and unwillingness to do something. Anyway, the outcome seems to be that "nemein needs to fix this". True that would be one option but seems like there might be a need to consider other possibilities.

That's the communication problem I mentioned. Hopefully we'll get some clarification to this through Quim if Nemein isn't talking. I'm mostly interested in if someone is paid to improve things around here or just to keep the current things running. In any case I'd expect to get a straight answers about the level of support the infra gets since as pointed out the community cannot do everyting without help. If there's no support to resolving this then the whole QA needs to be binned.

I disagree since the previous discussion didn't lead to a solution and the problems stayed as they are.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

There is an IRC chat meeting about community OBS on April 10 where any interested party should speak up. If we want to pursue fremantle as a target on OBS, then we need to decide that soon, and how we obtain that goal.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

Good. Do you have the time of the meeting at hand? I need to add it to my calendar so I won't forget.. :)

Seems that some work has already gone for fremantle obs setup. http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=52804 dunno if that was just a transition plan to meego and abandoned by now..

I'll poke lbt about it.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

The lack of testers is the ultimate problem to solve. I guess it doesn't help that you need to go to the website to do QA. Achipa had created a client for doing QA on device though. Nobody really followed up on this.

Cleanup can be done by the supertesters now already. If you have 2 thumbs down by supertesters, the package is removed.

Same thing for promoting. A QA triage meeting like done in the past would already make a lot of difference there.

I once created a PR1.2 fremantle target on OBS, just to see how many apps compiled. There were some issues, but it could be done if some people want to invest time in this. I can load the packages up in a project in OBS and give someone maintainer rights in that OBS project so you can play with the project config settings.

Most work would be identifying build issues, adding dependencies to the project config. There will be some scratchbox-isms that will pop up, but if someone wants to put some time in it, it can be done.

The apps.formeego.org client now has built in QA. This client could be backported to fremantle too, I guess.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

As timoph kinda says, can you point to the meeting announcement so a) we can attend and b) I can publicise it?

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

Do the change include automatic promotion to Extras when quarantine and votes are fulfiled? Most of the packages are ready to be promoted but now they don't have a maintainer anymore to do it manually.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

Thanks for sharing.

I agree that tester meeting would help a lot in getting stuff QA'd. From my point of view it's just a matter of setting a day & time for it and I'm in (we can discuss that in a different thread).

So if I understood correctly packages with at least 2 up votes from supertesters should get automatically promoted? Or do they just get unlocked for developer to promote? If promoted - there seems to be a bug ( http://maemo.org/packages/package_in...1.2-15-maemo2/ ). If it's not - how difficult it would be to make it do so? IMO that should help a lot with packages getting stuck in the QA queue.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

Promotion is unlocked then, the maintainer still needs to push it. The maintainer will receive an email that he can promote the package. Automatic promotion is something which would need to be added to the unlock part.

If there is consensus about doing automatic promotion on unlock, then I can add that to the code.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

There is also a problem to promote packages depending on libsdl-ttf2.0-0.

Do someone knows what is the status of that problem? Can that prohibition be revoked?

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

While I'm for that - I'd like to see a bit wider discussion on the topic if it's ok for others so we don't act against the community's will. Maybe the council can make the call?

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

Afaik that was added because it broke something in some PR release. But I really can't find what it was about anymore. If it works with PR1.3 or CSSU, I guess it can be removed.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

Nowadays that manual step is preventing a lot of applications to be promoted. Right now 49 applications are eligible for promotion (maybe not all depending on that step, but most).

As there aren't many testers, the process is taking time and there is a good chance that the original developer have moved to a different platform or is no longer interested in doing anything more with his application.

Consider that if the original maintainer had already promoted the application to Testing, it's because he considered it suitable for promotion, so there is no point in requiring another manual step.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

It's working with both, but I would wait to someone expert in SDL (Javispedro?) to clarify.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

@X-Fade, are you aware that the bug with kernel-power packages not appearing in fremantle extras-devel web interface is still not solved https://bugs.maemo.org/12284? I am posting here as noone has commented on the bugtracker since the bug has been reopened and both me and Pali were not able to reach you through IRC.

Do you have any idea what's wrong, is it that kernel-power build scripts somehow provoke autobuilder/whatever to go nuts or there is another problem? Any help on that will be appreciated.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

I remember this well. It was bug 10450.
I will _never_ understand why it was refused to fix the wrongly-named binary SDK package.
This can be fixed for SSU, but I do not think anyone has done it yet.

I do not know what has happened since that bug. If the crappy-dev-package is still on the SDK repo, it should get pulled before the Debian repackaged one (because "osso" > "maemo"), and therefore the built package should dep on libsdl-ttf2.0 (no -0), avoiding the blockage. So no idea why it deps on -0 atm.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

Well, I do have an application that I uploaded to testing, then got a complain about a serious issue although in a very corner-case configuration.
So I decided that I would not promote it, wanting to build a new version, but time passes...

In any case, the point is that I wouldn't do it automatically. There's an automated email reminder, and I think that's enough already.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

If you think that could be fixed in CSSU, just open a bug against it along with the original bug report.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

Agreed, as a developer there have been times in the past where I've pushed something to testing which - although it passed community QA - I didn't quite feel was ready to go to stable.

There should be a very clear and public discussion with the whole community about a change to having unmaintained packages in the stable repo. There may not be much practical difference, but you don't know how many N900 users use the repo (which is enabled by default, remember) but aren't following TMO or the Testing Squad list.

The council could ultimately make the decision (but not the testing squad list), but I'd like to see the rationale and discussion in public anyway so that there can be buy-in to the council's decision.

Maybe (and this is OTTOMH) the promotion requirements for an orphaned package should be much higher so that, effectively, the whole community is taking on responsibility for supporting this package (i.e. ensuring it doesn't have any critical issues; or we have a way of carrying comments through from testing to Downloads)

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

As the developer of the apps.formeego.org client software, I like the idea of having a version for Fremantle. So if apps.formeego.org is going to have a Fremantle target, I will port the client.

Currently I'm curious to see whether built-in QA in the client helps with the lack of testers. QA will be made more prominent in the client if you have enabled the staging repository.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

It's being announced over the Mer general mailing list. I've forwarded to the maemo developer mailing list. Please pardon the cut and paste here.

"From: martin brook <martin.brook100@googlemail.com>
Date: Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 1:34 PM
Subject: [mer-general] Fwd: Replacement for MeeGo Community OBS
To: mer-general@lists.merproject.org

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your time at the meeting and you can find Minutes and the full log below.

[17:14] <@MerBot> Meeting ended Tue Mar 20 17:14:38 2012 UTC. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Meetings . (v 0.1.4)
[17:14] <@MerBot> Minutes: http://mer.bfst.de/meetings/mer-meet...-20-16.00.html
[17:14] <@MerBot> Minutes (text): http://mer.bfst.de/meetings/mer-meet...3-20-16.00.txt
[17:14] <@MerBot> Log: http://mer.bfst.de/meetings/mer-meet...16.00.log.html

I was thinking of scheduling another get together on 10 April at 16:00 UTC , I'll send out an email nearer the time and if anyone wants to sponsor/donate please get in touch.

BR

vgrade"

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

That's because the app was never finished, and was never in a functional state. (I know, I still have it installed...)

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

+1

ten chars

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

I don't know why you insist is saying that the discussion has not been done in the open, you can see the thread in TMO with Council involved and then the continuation in the mailing list with Council approval.

It's the same situation for all those packages already in Extras that doesn't have a maintainer any more.

The real situation right now is that almost everyone use Devel as the only working repository, not only users installing whatever crap appears over there, but also developers that don't care any more with the broken QA system.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

Thanks. For the record, here's the original email.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

I originally was half-in the auto-promote camp, but you make a valid argument against it. Perhaps what we really need in a way for super-testers to be able (after community discussion) to push a package from testing to extras after it's been unpromoted by it'd developer for a set time. That would solve both issues: Highly used and stable items can be promoted without the worry that something will be auto-promoted that wasn't ready.

I think the real issue here is that we have several packages that are never leaving testing which are by far ready, but simply don't have an active maintainer.

As a side issue... Maybe giving Council a tool/account that can change an abandoned packages ownership would be a better fix. That would mean to promote a package testers would need to pester Council (so it won't happen without lots of scrutiny), but it's something that can be done without needed to take up the limited resources we have when it comes to maintainer efforts. It would also allow changes in ownership to vital projects when maintainers randomly vanish. which has happened a few times in the past year or so.

Thoughts?

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

That is great news. Thank you.

You might want to read the preliminary discussion in the IRC meeting if you can. It was implied that the community OBS would be moved to a different entity (still undefined). I am still unclear what else is implied by such a move.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

Does that "almost everyone" come from the set of active posters on t.m.o, or from the larger set of N900 owners, an unknown number of which have never heard of maemo.org?

Users already here have an avenue for support when a broken package winds up in Extras. Those not aware of this community will be at the mercy of local shops that likely don't even remember the N900 and Nokia Care, who probably can offer no suggestion other than a reflash.

I'd prefer an approach that attempts to minimize potential harm.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

That almost everyone refers to developers that now don't even care about the whole QA mechanism, because their applications will stay in Testing for ages.

So, as you say, all those users that don't know about TMO and only see the Extras repository think that there are only about 740 applications for their phones while there are far more working and usable applications that won't ever be promoted.

On the other hand, users that find about TMO, enable Devel without the required knowledge and break their systems continuously, just to install an application that might have been promoted long ago.

Of course we shouldn't allow broken packages to be promoted but not having any mechanism for promoting orphaned applications is a nonsense. You don't want it to be automatic? OK, but there should be a way for testers to promote applications.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

Eagerly waiting for answer about that. Yes, this post is a kind of bump - I think, that it shouldn't be ignored. Also, at least brief explanation why X-Fade wasn't contactable *again* would be appropriate.

/Estel

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

One thing preventing unlocked packages getting stuck in testing would be removal from testing if the maintainer hasn't promoted it in a month or something. Should be enough time to react.

This would also be a way to clean the queue now unless there are clear cases of packages that should be promoted. Anyway, I'd put the packages that have been in the queue and unlocked for a long time under a microscope and reject them even for small issues since most likely those packages will not receive fixes anymore.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

Fortunately, no one was "rejecting" such orphaned and abandoned package like kernel-power (which was left without fixes for a looong time), so Pali and - little later - freemangordon could come in, and take over maintainership. which would be problem-less, if only infrastructure would work like it should (package interface problems).

/Estel

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

AIUI, notwithstanding weird bugs about kernel-power specifically, the infrastructure is working "like it should". The current design allows a third party to request taking over maintainership. The current maintainer can approve that.

That packages are orphaned is a separate problem which could be addressed through a similar mechanism, but it obviously requires additional safeguards; don't you agree?

(Or were you referring to something else?)

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

I find really nice - you can just have the client open, browse for new apps in testing, install them & launch them from a single place. Then once you're done with testing, you just switch back to the client and fill in the QA form - nice & easy ! :)

I've recently QAed most of the new apps in staging like this during a single evening. :)

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

Heh. I wouldn't quite say that, having managed to "hijack" maintainership of a package accidentally (and with the corresponding bug report not even acknowledged almost two years later). Not that said "maintainership" is worth much, since others have managed to upload newer versions of the same package just fine anyway.

Just saying...

(Note also the bogus "latest", versionless instance on the package overview page - there was not even a build that month - but why bother reporting it?)

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

At #mer-meeting. I'll be there.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

I'd say it's working as it should be if I understood correctly (please correct me if I didn't) what you did - took package from diablo and made it available for fremantle thus making you the package's maintainer for fremantle.

Anyway, I agree all these communication problems need to be resolved somehow. I don't need to see heads on plates or people punished. I'm mainly interested in getting results that work. Stating things like "do this and that or we will go and setup our own community with blackjack and..." doesn't lead to constructive discussion. People usually repond more likely when not being insulted. State the problem from you pow and offer a solution and accept the fact that others will have different opinions and solution proposals.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

But of course, that is what those of us who are just ignored when having problems with repos etc are eager for. On the other hand the lack of accountability is unacceptable. This does not mean someone wants heads on plates or punishment, a little cooperation will be pretty enough AIUI. A single "damn, I have NFC what exactly is screwed up in the DB, lets chase it together" will be enough most of the time. The silence is not. Ignoring the questions over and over again is simply rude.

And who exactly do you cite in the the context of the repository problems? Will you point to a single statement made by me that classify into the above category or could be considered as insulting, so I got the prise of being put into the X-Fade's ignorelist. Or it is because we don't know each-other's first names and I wasn't here in the glorious days when maemo.org was established, summits were held, etc., so I could be easily ignored as some kind of interloper? Come on, lets name the things with their true names.