bug#65391: People need to report failing builds even though we have ci.guix.gnu.org for that

[Csepp <raingloom@riseup.net>]

Maxime Devos <maximedevos@telenet.be> writes:

> [[PGP Signed Part:Undecided]]
> Op 23-08-2023 om 01:45 schreef Csepp:
>> I tried signing up to the CI mailing list and it immediately became
>> overwhelming.
>
> If the CI list was split in ‘broken’ and ‘fixed’, such that you have
> the option to only subscribe to ‘broken’, would that help?  A large
> fraction of messages is for fixed packages, which do not need to be
> acted upon.

Yup, that would be an improvement.  Or some way to group messages by
package.

>> One possible improvement I have been thinking about is making it easy
>> for users to filter CI output to the packages in their profile closure,
>> so for example they would get advance notice of any broken packages
>> *before* attempting to install them.
>
> I assume you meant s/install/update.
>
> How is this an improvement?  I mean, how does this make
>
> ‘People need to report failing builds even though we have
> ci.guix.gnu.org for that.’
>
> less true?
>
> Best regards,
> Maxime Devos.
>
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>
> [[End of PGP Signed Part]]

A user is more likely to be able and motivated to fix a package that
they are using.  Getting notifications as a stream is a recipe for alert
fatigue.  There needs to be a way to at the very least move actionable
alert to the top of the list and to deduplicate alerts.
TLDR: alert fatigue is bad and it should not be the casual contributor's
job to fight it on their own.  If its filtering and grouping is expected
to be done on the client side then there should be guides for setting
those filters up.
Personally, it already takes enough time for me to read the bug
discussions.