Re: Commitfest problems

On 11.12.2014 16:06, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 11:00:21PM -0800, Josh Berkus wrote:
>>
>> I will add:
>>
>> 4. commitfest managers have burned out and refuse to do it again
>
> Agreed. The "fun", if it was ever there, has left the commitfest
> process.

I've never been a CFM, but from my experience as a patch author and
reviewer, I think there are two or three reasons for that (of course,
I'm not saying those are the most important ones or the only ones):

1) unclear definition of what CFM is expected to do

The current wiki page describing the role of CFM [1] is rather
obsolete, IMHO. For example it says that CFM assigns patches ro
reviewers, posts announcements to pgsql-rrreviewers, etc.

I don't think this was really followed in recent CFs.

This however results in people filling the gaps with what they
believe the CFM should do, causing misunderstandings etc. Shall
we update the description a bit, to reflect the current state
of affairs?

Maybe we should also consider which responsibilities should be
shifted back to the developers and reviewers. E.g. do we really
expect the CFM to assign patches to reviewers?

2) not really following the rules

We do have a few rules that we don't follow as much as we should,
notably:

* 1:1 for patches:reviews (one review for each submitted patch)
* no new patches after the CF starts (post it to the next one)
* CF ends at a specific date

I believe violating those rules is related to (1) because it may
lead to perception that CFM makes them up or does not enforce them
equally for all patches.

3) manual processing that could be automated

I think the CF site was a huge step forward, but maybe we could
improve it, to automate some of the CFM tasks? For example
integrating it a bit more tightly with the mailinglist (which would
make the life easier even for patch authors and reviewers)?

However as I said before, I never was a CFM - I'd like to hear from the
actual CFMs what's their opinion on this.

kind regards
Tomas

[1] https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Running_a_CommitFest