[CentOS-devel] SIG feedback

Tue May 11 15:15:20 UTC 2021
Davide Cavalca <dcavalca at fb.com>

On Mon, 2021-05-10 at 15:18 -0400, Rich Bowen wrote:
> If you have been involved in any of our SIGs, now or in the past - or, 
> indeed, if you'd like to be in the future - I'd like to hear from you.
> 
> I was going to do a formal survey, but I find I need a baseline - I 
> don't even know what questions to ask.
> 
> I'd like to hear what you love and what you hate about the SIG process.
> What you would like to see done differently. What features/services 
> you'd like to see added, and which we could drop.

The main issues I've hit so far are things around the developer
experience on git.centos.org and CBS. Notably:
- the lack of a working PR workflow:
https://pagure.io/centos-infra/issue/228
- the way the lookaside works: https://pagure.io/centos-infra/issue/259
- hard to discover clone URLs: https://pagure.io/centos-infra/issue/245
- support for modularity in CBS:
https://pagure.io/centos-infra/issue/294

None of these are showstoppers, but they are definitely roadblocks. The
PR workflow in particular is problematic -- right now we rely on SIG
members pushing directly to the repos, which makes code review
difficult. It's also a blocker for external contribution (as, though
one can technically put up a PR, there is no way to actually merge it).
I would love to have something closer to the workflow in Fedora here,
specifically:
- allow SIG members to review and merge PRs onto their branch
- kick off scratch builds on PRs to get signal

The other thing I would love is a way for SIGs to publish structured
documentation on docs.centos.org, akin to the "quick docs" model that
Fedora uses.

Cheers
Davide