Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Introducing maemo.org packages

maemo.org package interface
Starting with Fremantle, packages can now be managed by developers through the maemo.org packages interface. Community testers can help in the QA process by testing applications in the queue and giving thumbs up/down for a package.

At the same time we open the extras-testing and extras repositories for Fremantle for promotion through the interface.

The interface has the following features:
  • Package search
  • Package listings per repository
  • Only allow maintainers to promote a package
  • Request package maintainership
  • Automatic package maintainership assignment on first upload of a package
  • Automatic dependency tree checking
  • QA queue for testing repository
  • Promotion unlock to stable (Extras) repository based on karma score
  • Leaving comments when you encountered problems with a package
We index all Fremantle Extras*, SDK and Nokia-binaries repositories, so we can check for availability of every dependency. A warning will be shown on a package information page, when there are missing dependencies. Package promotion will be blocked until the issue has been resolved.

At this moment the interface is in beta testing mode, so please be aware that there might be some rough edges. Promotion will happen manually for the first few promotions, so we can make sure that everything is working. Feel free to file bugs in bugzilla, if you encounter any.

Improvements will come in the next few weeks. More integration with the autobuilder is already coming next week.

In a later post, I will discuss the new promotion process for Fremantle a bit more in depth. This is still something that needs to be refined a bit.

5 comments:

Murray said...

Great. How did you implement this?

Niels Breet said...

@Murray It is done as a Midgard component: org.maemo.packages

So it integrates into everything we already have.

Tim Samoff said...

Would this interface be a good way to suggest changes to package descriptions as well? It could be done via the commenting system, e.g.:

http://maemo.org/packages/package_instance/view/fremantle_extras-devel_free_armel/abscal/0.1/

Or, should this be done another way? (Like Bugzilla once it is used as the bug tool for packages.)

Niels Breet said...

@Tim Samoff I am looking into hooking into bugs.maemo.org. But this is a bit tricky. At the moment we have no easy way of filing bugs against packages.

So these comments might be at least a way to make problems known. The maintainers of the package will be notified this way.

I need to discuss automatically creating components for new packages in bugzilla with Andre.

Tim Samoff said...

Ok, cool... This is a good way for non-devs go contribute to UX. :)

Integrating this system with Bugzilla sounds cool, but it seems like it would be _very_ complicated. Good luck!

For now, just having the devs notified is good enough. :)