launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Scott Kitterman <ubuntu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thursday, June 05, 2014 01:56:26 Colin Watson wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 04, 2014 at 04:54:03PM -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> > How will uploads to this new derived distribution get back into
> > Ubuntu?
> 
> I think I said something about this in my original mail, but I want to
> set a rule that nothing gets into the derived distribution without being
> in Ubuntu first (even if not completely landed, they should at least be
> in the process, e.g. in -proposed), so it's purely a stabilisation
> branch without new work of its own.  I had considerable support from
> relevant managers last week for this being a general rule, although the
> people doing the direct customer engagement note that there may be some
> urgent cases where it won't work out.  As far as I can tell we should be
> able to make sure that those are exceptions rather than the rule.
> 
> When the branch closes, I intend to check through it to ensure that
> everything has landed in Ubuntu.  If the archive permissions all match
> up, then it should be OK to copy source+binaries back on the grounds
> that the same set of people were allowed to upload and review it;
> otherwise, a few manually-checked source uploads shouldn't be a big
> deal.
> 
> Canonical is, as far as I can make out, strongly committed to making
> sure that it's possible to continue rolling production phones forward to
> newer versions without having to maintain lots of long-lived
> per-customer branches, which implies making sure that everything in
> stable branches also lands in mainline.  That makes me confident that
> this won't be forgotten even if I get hit by a bus or something.
> 
> > Will uploads to this new derived distribution be limited to Ubuntu
> > developers?  If not, how is this being controlled?
> 
> I would very much like the permissions on the derived distribution to be
> set to exactly match those on Ubuntu, and the permissions on the derived
> series to exactly match those on utopic, so that there's no uncertainty
> about whether it's safe to copy packages back and forward.  It's not
> meant to be a laxer version of the primary archive, but if anything err
> in the opposite direction.
> 
> Most landings will be taking place using the CI engine, so the same
> issues apply as in the recent conversation on ubuntu-devel.  I expect
> that by that point we will be using the ground-up rewrite of the engine
> that's currently in preparation, and hopefully the task to ensure that
> all uploads have some kind of review from somebody with LP
> Archive.checkUpload() permission on the package will be completed by
> then, at which point there should be no awkward grey areas.  That said,
> if that task isn't done, or if the CI work slips so that we're still
> using the current "CI Train" engine by then, it's no worse than the
> situation today.
> 
> We'll presumably also need some version of the IRC notifications that
> #ubuntu-release currently gets on queue and image events.  I have no
> very strong opinion on whether those should be on #ubuntu-release to
> keep everything consolidated (especially if the permissions are set to
> match so that the same people have access to handle them), or whether
> that's too much noise that many of the denizens there don't care about.

Personally, I'm fine with it being in #ubuntu-release.  I think we're already 
much too fragmented and people are too comfortable in their own corner of the 
project.

As you know from previous mails, I'm very troubled by the current CI train 
situation with respect to permissions.  I believe it is completely 
inconsistent with our governance processes and represents, at best, an unknown 
from a security perspective.  No worse than the situation today is no comfort 
for me (and yes, I know it's the same either way, but I think this is a 
critical infrastructure issue - the only reason this isn't a Tech Board item 
right now is it's already on the way to being resolved).

Will phone RTM dates be better aligned with the Ubuntu development schedule in 
the future?

Scott K