stability of master - just QA and hydra is not enough

[ng0 <ng0@infotropique.org>]

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(This is brief and incomplete, just the way I see it right now)
Hi,

in the recent months (or rather: regulary) guix master is
regulary unusable.
To be accepted as a system which anyone can use even without
the need of having to run from git, the current deployment
process (is this called deployment? at least I mean the
commit getting into the master branch) isn't really acceptable
from a technical and social perspective.

I have no formal solution but I want to have this dicussion
because I can no longer stand the state of how often "assumed
to work" commits are pushed. QA is not enough, and waiting
for hydra to pick up on the failure isn't either.
We need to revise the way commits land in master.
Master can be relatively stable. We should aim for stable with
a combination of extending the QA process and a technical
approval mechanism.

Obviously we can't catch every error, that's what hydra/cuirass[0]
is for. What we can and should catch is a set of defined scenarios.
From my perspective GuixSD is the primary concern here for me, I
don't care for Guix on other systems.
In this rather not well though through scenario (give me 2 - 3 weeks
and I can write down my whole ideas, I have a busy schedule) I
imagine that _before_ commits end up in master we build a set of
virtual systems which at least must:

- be build successfully
- run through the initrd
- briefly see the login manager

We then need guidelines which commits are classified for building
on which set of test machines.
Finally the commit must be approved by more than 1 person and
commited.

There are odds and scenarios we can not test, but what we can
test we should test.
Stability must not be an enterprise feature (as it was mentioned
in the past), it is expected by people who don't want to waste
time with developing. Even reporting bugs is only done by those
who bother to do so or are able to. I have more to add to the
reasons when I can send out an longer email, this is just a bit
of an impulse.

0: What is it these days? Is hydra now just a in-retirement frontend
for cuirass or how does bayfront work these days? I understand cuirass,
not hydra.
-- 
ng0
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