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

[Giovanni Biscuolo]

Hi Simon,

zimoun <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> writes:

> On Wed, 08 Jun 2022 at 11:30, Giovanni Biscuolo <g@xelera.eu> wrote:
>
>>> It reduces a bit the pressure on the committers, IMHO.
>>
>> It raises a bit the pressure on the maintainers, IMHO :-)
>
> What does it mean “maintainer” here?

Guix maintainers

> Maybe I miss something but I do not think the Guix maintainers play a
> special role in reviewing or committing.

not directly but they oversee the entire process, no?

> Could you explain which pressure you are envisioning?

it was explained above your quotation in my original message, IMHO this
is the pressure:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---

> **automatically** merged every week to the branch “stable” and by
> default user pull “stable”.  One week let the time to build by the CI,
> check everything is fine and fix otherwise.

This means that if the fix is not committed (rebased?) in that weekly
timerfame the problematic patch is automatically pushed to stable
without a fix; also we'll have that problematic commit in stable anyway
(affecting users like me that are "pinning" specific channels?), unless
we rebase "unstable"... "manually": am I wrong?

--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

IMVHO automatic merges once a week from something /possibly/ not working
to "stable" is not a good solution to the problem of reviwers scarcity

>> I understand there is a certain "entrance barrier" to become patch
>> reviewer, but I'm afraid we cannot lower it more than the current
>> situation except for the offload build server and more tolling options.
>
> I am missing the meaning of «tolling option».

sorry, my intention was to write "tooling options", meaning the range of
tools available to committers/reviewers to automate some tasks

> I think it is possible to lower a bit the reviewing barrier.  Today, the
> patch submission is very flexible:

IMHO this is a good thing, it lowers the barrier for new contributors

[...]

> For instance, consider submission #47171 [1].

seen

> It was not my first contribution, it was not the first review by
> Ricardo, and we both missed a “guix pull” breakage despite the fact I
> did “make as-derivation” (and I am not convinced it is systematically
> done ;-)).

as Ludo' was suggesting, maybe we could start with a checklist and then
see what we can automate?

> Another example, when working of Preservation of Guix [2], I noticed
> that many packages using git-fetch were not in SWH; which means that
> “guix lint” had not been run on these packages.

is there any way to force it (along with other linting) when commiting?

> We could answer more automated tools on infra side, etc. which is the
> direction to go.  But we are not there yet and things need to be done
> today. :-)  That’s why, I think the project should:
>
>  1. change the default branch of “git push” vs the default branch of
>  “guix pull”.

sorry I don't understand what this means

>  2. add a bit more of checkers on patch submission easing patch
>  review.

I guess you mean "automatic checkers": I agree that checking tools
are good (something is missing in "guix lint"?)

[...]

Thank you! Gio'

-- 
Giovanni Biscuolo

Xelera IT Infrastructures

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