Patchwork (was Re: Governance revisited)

[Frans Kool]

Ge van Geldorp <ge <at> gse.nl> writes:

> 
> > From: Vitaliy Margolen <wine-devel <at> kievinfo.com>
> > 
> > So in a sense you will require some one to respond for any 
> > incoming e-mail to wine-patches. And if no one does, 
> > Alexandre don't get to see the status?
> 
> Not sure I understand what you mean. If no-one responds to the patch on
> wine-devel the patch would remain queued and it would show up in Alexandres
> list.
> 

Hi,

Just to mix in this discussion my 0.02, I am one of those would-be submitters
who hasn't done so because I don't want to submit crappy code.
I've been viewing at loads of patches to see what they need to conform to.

In my opinion, this patchwork system combined with the proposal of
mentors/domain experts (as also described by someone in this thread) would mean
that once I submit a patch which does not comply with the rules (which I would
not know as starting contributer), I at least would get a message back from the
bot which tells me why it was obvious wrong. Perhaps based on this I would
receive a link to a wiki page where these rules are mentioned?
If the mentors get multiple patches from different patches with a generic
mistake, perhaps a new rule could be added to the bot (and the wiki) to prevent
new contributers from making this mistake in the future.

Worst case scenario: The bot does not find anything wrong, the mentor would
review and approve, but Alexandre would not approve. In this case at least it
would be rejected and he would have to make a (minor) comment as to why. But
this seems to be the current situation.

For me, the positive side would be that I could have an overview of my patches,
learn from the feedback and improve them.
I'm not saying that that is currently not possible, but since I am only able to
work on this after working hours, it would take more of a bite out of my time
available than if this patchwork system would be there, which increases the
chances of me actually submitting patches.

There is a lot of information for developers in the wiki already, but as a new
person it would be nice to have some tools/pages to guide you through the
process. I am very much in favour of the mentor initiative, since they could
filter/improve the patches for specific areas before Alexandre needs to be
bothered and provide valuable feedback to me.

Okay, system or not, I will continue to try to contribute. Even if it is just by
 testing applications or translating strings.

Frans Kool.