QA/FixBuildRequires

= This is a landing page for the Fix Build Requires QA project =

What are we doing
Currently our Fedora Core package specs are not up to Extras quality. We know this, you've told us this enough times. So to fix this, we are launching a QA project to tackle one aspect of quality, the Build Requires to populate the buildroot beyond the base system. Using mock to test our packages will allow you to find packages with broken Build Requires

These are slated for removal from the default mock build environment before FC6test2: autoconf automake automake14 automake15 automake16 automake17 bison byacc createrepo ctags diffstat doxygen flex gdb gettext indent intltool libtool m4 openssh-server patchutils perl-XML-Dumper perl-XML-Parser perl-XML-SAX pkgconfig rpm-python strace


 * Add those to build the package. If you succeed, let us know in the bug!

This works for packages that fail to build. There is also the case where packages will build cleanly, but may be missing functionality, like the ability to display jpg files. These are harder to track. When a package builds successfully it should be compared to the existing package in rawhide. This can be done by using 'rpmdiff' from the 'rpmlint' package available from extras.

If your package fails to build in mock for another reason.... feel free to file that bug too, in the same way. We'll be looking at those too.

What do I get out of this?
First and foremost, you help us to improve the quality of Fedora Core. This really helps all, as it will be much easier to rebuild our packages for your own users.

But, we have a little something special for those of you that really help us out:


 * Filing a bug gives you one karma point.


 * Successfully fixing a bug gives you five karma points.

Karma points will be redeemable in some way toward the Cool Stuff Store. We don't know the exchange rate just yet, we'll let you know.

When is this happening?
Right now! Today! Start as soon as possible!! We plan to run this project through the FC6 development cycle, and by then every package will have been looked at and fixed.

Who can I contact about this?

 * Will Woods (Fedora QA): wwoods at redhat dot com
 * JesseKeating (Fedora Release engineer): jkeating at redhat dot com

How can I help if building each package takes a while on my system?
MattDomsch regularly makes full rebuilds of rawhide in mock, and posts the results. You can scan through package build results, file and propose patches then without building each package before starting.