1131835 - Expedited review for open-source addons with VCS linked to addons.m.o

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Add-on Validation, defect)

Description

[Zack Weinberg (:zwol)]

This isn't a fully-baked idea.  I'm thinking about the signed-addons policy and how we could offer positive incentives to addon developers.  It occurs to me that, among good (non-malicious) addons, the #1 reason I'm aware of for _not_ distributing the addon through AMO is that AMO's review cycle is slow, unpredictable, and opaque, and therefore unfriendly to rapid iteration.  This was, for instance, the primary reason EFF's HTTPS Everywhere addon was not on AMO the last time I checked.  (That was a while ago, the situation may have changed since.)

Suppose we create an expedited review queue for addons which are fully open source, have a test suite, and are willing to hook up their VCS and bug tracker to AMO.  I'm imagining something like this: You pass an initial review which works the way it does now.  After that, AMO automatically builds each commit and runs your test suite, plus some sort of fully automated linter, and if those all pass it publishes the addon for people who have opted into not-fully-reviewed development snapshots.  When you're happy with a version you tag it beta, which triggers manual review.  We guarantee manual-review turnaround < 1 week, we respond to most review issues by filing bugs on you, and _you_ get to decide whether those bugs should block your release.  There's some clear, written policy for exactly which bugs we won't budge on.

We could also integrate development status into the public-facing addon pages and give addons that comply with these policies prioritized placement in the catalogue.

I think something along those lines might make addon developers feel like they would themselves get something out of moving back to AMO, and at the same time it would encourage development best practices and maybe even reduce review workload in the long run.

Comment 1

[Mathieu Agopian [:magopian]]

We could also use github hooks (not sure if bitbucket has some either?). Just a note though: we currently don't review beta files at all (and haven't been for years), so people on the development channel already have what you're describing (up to date, frequent updates, without any review lag).

Comment 2

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

Add-ons are no longer blocked by review.