On Sunday 28 March 1999, at 21 h 48, the keyboard of Martin Schulze <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [ Mailing to Debian Development and Debian QA, please send replies > *only* to Debian QA <debian-qa@lists.debian.org> ] As you wish but please CC: me, I'm not on debian-qa. > What is debian-qa and is it eatable? I agree with Adam that the goals seem very broad. Reading your message, one could think that Debian-QA is everything in Debian. Is QA really the technical direction of Debian or is it more a "sweeper" checking packages in the back office? I do not find a document on the Web server <http://www.debian.org/devel/> describing what is QA (my management wants me to do QA here, with ISO 9001 and so on, but it's probably not the same). > Although we have strict rules (Policy) that defines requirements for > packages there is still missing a "department" which assures that > every package is packaged well and integrates in the system nicely. Isn't it the job of developers? And isn't checking the role of every other developer? As a packager myself, I appreciate, first the m68k porting team, for their good bug reports, which helped me a lot to improve the quality of my packages, then the other developers and users who fill in the BTS, our main QA tool and something we should be proud of. > . Check old bugs - and work on them > > . Check packages with lots of bugs - and work on them This is the normal job of any developer. I took over dupload and squashed two dozens if bugs. Am I doing QA? > . Check if packages are policy conforming Isn't it done by dinstall? I had several packages rejected by it, so there is a control. > If you find packages which lack support for some of the features > mentioned above the proper action would be to file a wishlist bug > report. The bug report has to point to accurate documentation or > better include a description of the missing feature and a description > how to solve this. It would be best if the report would include a > proper patch/menu file/doc file etc. I'll add one: one of the worst packages, with respect with the BTS, is the BTS itself <http://bugs.debian.org/bugs.debian.org>. Bugs, even important and easy-to-fix, are obviously completely ignored, which is a shame. Next QA goal: fix the bugs (no, I cannot do a NMU, I'm not root on the machine which runs the BTS).
