Re: Considering Gerrit for CFs

On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 1:43 PM, Phil Sorber <phil(at)omniti(dot)com> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 10:20 AM, Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> wrote:
>> On 2/8/13 5:23 AM, Magnus Hagander wrote:
>>> But do you have any actual proof that the problem is in "we
>>> loose reviewers because we're relying on email"?
>>
>> Here is one: Me.
>>
>> Just yesterday I downloaded a piece of software that was previously
>> unknown to me from GitHub and found a bug. Within 15 minutes or so I
>> had fixed the bug, made a fork, sent a pull request. Today I read, the
>> fix was merged last night, and I'm happy.
>>
>> How would this go with PostgreSQL? You can use the bug form on the web
>> site, but you can't attach any code, so the bug will just linger and
>> ultimately put more burden on a core contributor to deal with the
>> minutiae of developing, testing, and committing a trivial fix and
>> sending feedback to the submitter. Or the user could take the high road
>> and develop and patch and submit it. Just make sure it's in context
>> diff format! Search the wiki if you don't know how to do that! Send it
>> to -hackers, your email will be held for moderation. We won't actually
>> do anything with your patch, but we will tell you to add it to that
>> commitfest app over there. You need to sign up for an account to use
>> that. We will deal with your patch in one or two months. But only if
>> you review another patch. And you should sign up for that other mailing
>> list, to make sure you're doing it right. Chances are, the first review
>> you're going to get is that your patch doesn't apply anymore, but which
>> time you will have lost interest in the patch anyway.
>
> This. This times 1000.

I, too, could not agree more.

> I'm not sure if Gerrit specifically is the answer, but there are
> definitely better ways to do code review like this. I really like the
> way github allows you to post a patch and then have conversation
> around it, offer comments on specific lines of code, and add updates
> to the patch all in one interface. Another benefit is that a lot more
> people are familiar and comfortable with this work flow. There are
> even some open source work-a-likes that we could use to we don't have
> to rely on a 3rd party like github. Gerrit seems to do it slightly
> differently with side by side diff's and patch revisions, but either
> way would be an improvement.

Please take this for what it's worth - I'm not a code reviewer or
committer - just a pretty heavy user, and I lurk on (most?) of the
mailing lists.

Mostly I find bugs and ask others to fix them, since I lack the
necessary intimate knowledge of postgresql internals to produce a
meaningful patch. That said, I believe that - from my perspective -
having postgresql's interaction with it's *large* community would only
be improved by using something like github. I am far more likely to
try to introduce a new feature, minor bugfix, code improvement, et
cetera when using github than I would be if the interaction starts
with a post to a mailing list and at least /looks/ like it might
involve rather more than that.

--
Jon