Re: On commit access, patch review, and remaining healthy

[Giovanni Biscuolo]

Hi Ludo'

Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

[...]

> OK, understood.
>
> I can think of two ways to reassure committers:
>
>   1. By having clear reviewer check lists (you’d do that if you tick all
>      the boxes, you’re fine);

also a description of the review process used by you and other
experienced patch reviewers could be much useful: it's more /how/ do you
check al the aspects of a patch (it's not only running "guix lint"
obviously) than /what/ do you check, IMHO

maybe this could be a specific chapter of the cookbook, maybe some
experienced patch reviewer could make a sort of (reharshed) "live patch
review" video of some patch representing interesting "class of patches"
reviewers may encounter (upstream updates, changes in Guix package
structure, patches to fix building issues...)

if available I'd also attend a paid "Contributing Guix" course, since it
would be /very/ useful to my work... but that's out of scope here, I
think

>   2. By improving automation—nothing new here: if there was a tick that
>      says “applies without merge conflicts” and another one that read
>      “builds fine”, anyone could lightheartedly hit the “merge”
>      button.

OK but this can also be achieved now without automation, just by
commenting the patch submission so that committers can "reuse" the work
already done by others; a check-list can help for sure: could it be
auto-generated by debbugs via a mail-template on receiving a message in
the patch-list?

> #2 is going to take time I’m afraid, but at least #1 is actionable
> (‘guix lint’ should help, too).
>
> WDYT?  Are there other possibilities that come to mind?

is it possible to automate "guix lint" (and add it as git hook before
commit?) only for the package(s) specific to a patch-set? [1]

[...]

> And yes, we should take advantage of the WhereIsEveryone meetups and
> guix-mentors to get to know each other, to help each other, and to
> demystify the whole thing.

I'd not miss the chance to someway document important things said during
meetings/IRC/email-messages useful to demystify the whole thing: I know
it's more work for some of you, but hopefully for less work in the
future

[...]

Thanks!  Gio'


[1] that is: is there a command that given a patch is able to give us a
list of affected guix packages?

-- 
Giovanni Biscuolo

Xelera IT Infrastructures

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