Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Alec Warner <antarus@g.o>
To: Gentoo Dev <gentoo-dev@l.g.o>
Subject: Re: Code Review Systems Was: [gentoo-dev] Git Migration: launch plan & schedule
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 2015 15:45:32
Message-Id: CAAr7Pr_=rcJDR4gye2ss0iMgrfLwyy960G+h7i2w1fqeGxuMhw@mail.gmail.com
In Reply to: Re: Code Review Systems Was: [gentoo-dev] Git Migration: launch plan & schedule by Rich Freeman
1 On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 4:47 AM, Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
2
3 > On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 5:31 AM, hasufell <hasufell@g.o> wrote:
4 > >
5 > > The quality problem is that we have too many developers. If you make
6 > > community contributions easier, sane and more reliable (due to code
7 > > review) then you solve several problems at once, because you need _less_
8 > > developers. Are you aware that we could potentially "pull" in hundreds
9 > > of contributors who chose to work on their personal overlay instead of
10 > > the gentoo tree? Are you aware that there are a lot of those people?
11 >
12 > Yes and no.
13 >
14 > I'll agree that with a review workflow we might only need one reviewer
15 > for every 10 contributors, or something like that. If we have 100
16 > active devs today, in theory we could instead turn 20 of them into
17 > reviewers, and now we can support 2000 contributors.
18 >
19 > There are some big assumptions with this kind of argument, though:
20 > 1. We might find that we don't even have 20 devs interested in doing
21 > a substantial amount of review.
22 > 2. The main repository is very diverse. If 50% of our packages have
23 > only one person interested in maintaining them, then they get dropped
24 > since reviewers will ignore their contributions. Or, they'll just
25 > rubber-stamp them which is adding valueless work.
26 >
27 > So, a review system could make manpower either more of an issue or
28 > less of one. I suspect that trying to force it would basically end up
29 > putting the entire distro on hold until most of the current devs quit,
30 > and a new crop signs up who is interested in using the new workflow,
31 > and then they're starting with zero experience.
32 >
33 > I think a review model is best implemented by individual project
34 > teams. They could use it to track changes in an overlay or branch in
35 > the main tree, and then move those into the main tree using whatever
36 > quality system seems best. The team can figure out what is working
37 > best for it, and if over time a large number of devs feel that it is a
38 > good way to work we could then talk about doing it with the main tree.
39 > I still suspect we'll end up having problems with the 70% of packages
40 > that don't fall into a project though.
41 >
42
43 So basically Gentoo Sunrise? :)
44
45 -A
46
47
48 >
49 > --
50 > Rich
51 >
52 >

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