This contains information for reference by members of the Ubuntu Backporters team, or anyone interested in the details of the backport process. This page is not an official statement of policy; this is only a quick reference for team members.

Meetings

Meetings are usually held as needed, on libera.chat in #ubuntu-meeting. The record of previous meetings and action items, along with any agenda for upcoming meetings, should be updated at the agenda page.

Process

What to monitor

Upload Queues

The team should regularly check the upload queues for packages uploaded to the backports pocket. Note that both the 'Unapproved' and the 'New' queues need to be monitored; the 'New' queue will contain uploads if the package doesn't yet exist in the release, while the 'Unapproved' queue will contain uploads for existing packages.

Currently, the pages for the queues are:

• Impish

  • New

  • Unapproved

• Focal

  • New

  • Unapproved

• Bionic

  • New

  • Unapproved

NOTE: that list will quickly become out of date; we should create or re-use some CLI tool for checking the queues

Mailing List

The team should subscribe to the mailing list and someone should respond to any public email. The mailing list can also be used for team communication.

IRC

Currently, there is no dedicated IRC channel for the team; members should communicate in libera.chat in the #ubuntu-devel channel. Any public requests or discussion should also happen in this channel. If backports IRC discussion starts to increase, the team should decide if a dedicated IRC channel is appropriate.

How to approve or reject uploads

Team members may approve or reject packages in one of the backports upload queues, either using the web UI, or tooling from the archive tools project.

Note that for uploads in the 'Unapproved' queue, only the single approval of the source upload should be needed; however for uploads in the 'New' queue, the source upload approval is required first, and then after the package builds a second round of approval(s) is needed for the binary package(s) for each architecture.

Web UI

Any team member should see controls to either accept or reject uploads on the web pages for the upload queues.

CLI

TBD