It is still under construction and content may change. Do not rely on the information on this page.
Don't forget to check discussion page.
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Please bear in mind that this is just a draft meant to provoke discussion. Nothing is rock-solid here and it is not an attempt of the QA team to Fedora project domination.
Introduction
The purpose of this document is to present a policy/workflow that will be used when handling package updates. It specifies when, where and which kind of package updates may occur. It also specifies what happens to the package updates they are evaluated as PASSED, FAILED or NEEDS_INSPECTION, as per Package update acceptance test plan.
Scope
- This policy concerns only currently supported Fedora releases.
- Rules for the current pending release will be added to this document. Rules for Rawhide may come in the future.
- This policy is recommended also for security updates, but Security Response Team may choose not to follow it.
Workflow
All package updates are submitted to the 'updates-testing' repository. First they await Quality Assurance team approval. QA team approval is granted through Package update acceptance test plan, whose result for the particular update must be PASSED (it may be NEEDS_REVIEW initially and then changed to PASSED by waiving warnings, this is allowed). Then Release Engineering team approval is needed. Generally all kinds of updates are permitted (bugfixes, enhancements, new upstream versions, brand new packages), but the Release Engineering team may disapprove an update according to <<FIXME - add document listing package update criteria for RelEng>>. When both approvals are granted, the update is pushed to the 'update-testing' repository.
The package updates must spend at least 14 days in the 'updates-testing' repository, or at least 7 days provided they have karma of at least 3 and no negative feedback. Only after that the package maintainer may submit them to the 'updates' repository. The Release Engineering team may approve or disapprove such an update according to <<FIXME - the same document as above>>. If the approval is granted, the update is pushed to the 'updates' repository.
Update release schedule
- The 'updates-testing' repository is updated continuously, it is refreshed for every package update.
- The 'updates' repository is updated regularly once a week for regular updates and continuously for security updates.
- Will that help us improve quality by having updates as a weekly "pack" (with possible interactions and collisions, etc) instead of continuous stream of single updates? If QA can't leverage this, then it can be a daily push or a continuous push.
- By default the end-user is notified once in a fortnight for regular updates and daily for security updates.
- This may fall into other policy than Package update policy?
Responsibilities
- When a serious problem is found in a not yet released updated package, package update builder is responsible for removing this update from 'updates-testing' repository. Fedora Update System must provide this option for package update builder, package maintainer, Quality Assurance team and Release Engineering team.
- The Fedora Update System is responsible for sending notifications to package update builder and package maintainer when:
- the update receives a result other than PASSED from Package update acceptance test plan
- Maybe let's inform even on PASSED? Even in this case the maintainer may see some advisory warnings he would like to fix and withdraw the package from 'updates-testing'.
- approval is granted or refused by Release Engineering team (both when submitting to 'updates-testing' or 'updates' repository)
- the update has fulfilled requirements for submitting into 'updates' repository
- the update becomes available in the 'updates' repository
- the update receives a result other than PASSED from Package update acceptance test plan