Patchwork (was Re: Governance revisited)

[Ge van Geldorp]

> From: Mike McCormack [mailto:mike at codeweavers.com] 
> 
> Seems like that is a system that doesn't scale well at all, 
> as it requires Alexandre to specifically respond to each and 
> every patch.

No, it doesn't require that. It requires *someone* to respond, that could be
a fellow developer on wine-devel. A comment added via the web interface or a
message about the patch on wine-devel would set the status to RFC, meaning
the patch wouldn't show up in Alexandres list (or with a very low priority).
It would be the responsibility of the author to set the status back to New
if he thinks that's appropriate. Sorry if that wasn't clear from the message
you replied to, that message was explicitly aimed at the work Alexandre
does, there's more to the system than just that.

For the automatic status update to work, we would need to make an automatic
connection between wine-devel messages and the patch, could be done using
the In-Reply-To header or making sure each message sent out on wine-patches
has a unique ID in its subject, a reply to that message would (in most email
clients) copy the subject including the unique ID.

In the end, when the number of developers grows, the number of reviewers
grows too (every developer is a potential reviewer). Seems to scale pretty
well actually.

> It also seems like it encourages patch submitters to not 
> polish their patches themselves and just submit a higher 
> volume of low quality patches for Alexandre to review, since 
> the onus will then be on him to respond.

First of all, I don't see the encouragement and secondly, how does the
current system prevent that?

> The current system, which leaves the responsibility for the 
> patch with the submitter both scales better, and encourages 
> patch submitters to think about their patches more.

I'm not sure why you think responsibility for the patch would shift. It
would still be the authors responsibility to write acceptable code. The only
thing that would change is that the author gets feedback at the earliest
possible moment, be it from the bot, peer review or Alexandre.

> We should encourage more people 
> to participate in the patch review process, so that we have 
> more reviewers and a more scalable process.

Absolutely. The proposed system doesn't change the review process, it allows
peer review too. It just acts as a kind of safety net. Authority and
responsibility should go hand-in-hand. I hope it's clear that I don't have a
problem with Alexandre having the authority to make the final decision on
whether a patch goes in or not, I just believe that with that authority
comes the responsibility to inform the author if a patch isn't acceptable in
it's current form. Hopefully a fellow developer has already reviewed the
patch and told the author something is wrong but in the end we as developers
are not psychic and simply cannot know what Alexandre thinks about a patch.

> btw. Is there any reason that you can't request a review of 
> your patches, or report the problem that you're trying to fix 
> in bugzilla, as I suggested elsewhere?

How would that improve Alexandres productivity? As pointed out by Troy, it
just means he has to look at a patch twice before sending a reply. Not to
mention the time it costs the author. Shouldn't we be looking at the
productivity of everyone involved in Wine development and not just at
Alexandres productivity (although I acknowledge his special position)? I'm a
bit surprised (and, to be honest, also a little bit annoyed) about the low
value you seem to place on the time contributed by the developers.

Ge van Geldorp.