Note: this is one of two messages on roughly the same topic. This message is trying to deal with the POLITICAL and process questions about Ubuntu's work in this area. I have set the Reply-To to debian-*project*. Please send your technical contributions to debian-*policy*, as followups to my other message which I have posted only there.
The first two paragraphs are common to the two messages: One thing that the Debian universe is lacking is a good way to automatically test packages. This makes it hard to spot regressions, and difficult to be systematic. Ubuntu are proposing to invent a system to allow us to do automated regression tests. The full plan consists of a number of pieces and can be read here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AutomatedTesting If you are is interested in this subject you might like to take a look. Feel free to make your technical comments on debian-*policy*, or any other appropriate channel. (That does _not_ include -project!) Of course, you are welcome to discuss this on ubuntu-devel, or by private email, or by tacking it onto the end of the wiki page, as seems appropriate, but I think debian-policy is probably the right venue at the moment. We (Ubuntu) are trying to develop a standard arrangement which Debian will want to use too. In case it's not obvious from the wiki page, the intent is to invent new machinery which will be shared with and used by Debian and Ubuntu and of course any other Debian-derivatives who like it. In particular, I'm expecting us to make the proposed new test harness packages available in Debian, and for Ubuntu to send new test cases and other per-package changes up to Debian just as we would for any other non-Ubuntu-specific improvement to a package. One of the important parts needed here is an interface for a Debian-format package to enumerate and describe the tests it supplies, and to allow a test harness to invoke them. That interface needs, obviously, to be discussed here on debian-policy. I hope that we can discuss it and improve this interface specification (written largely by me so far) to the point where we have something that will go into the Debian Policy Manual. So I have posted another message just to -policy to start that discussion (and to collect feedback on other aspects of my plans). We (Ubuntu, again) want to deploy this for our next release, so we need to get the interface settled fairly quickly, so just to be clear: if the discussion gets too badly bogged down, we will probably decide just to go ahead and implement something as best we can based on the discussion up to that point - just like things have always been done in the Debian world. I'm aware that there are have been some difficult politics between Debiaan and Ubuntu. If there are significant objection to our approach then of course we should talk about that and about how we can improve matters. So if you'd like to talk about that then I think debian-project is probably the right place. Thanks, Ian. (wearing both my Ubuntu and Debian hats) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
