Re: Bottleneck problem to merge Python patches

[Cleber Rosa]

On Sat, Sep 19, 2020 at 01:17:06PM +0200, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé wrote:
> Hi Aleksandar,
> 
> (extending the Cc list to broader audience)
> 
> On 9/18/20 10:33 PM, Aleksandar Markovic wrote:
> > 
> > On Friday, August 28, 2020, Ahmed Karaman <ahmedkhaledkaraman@gmail.com
> > <mailto:ahmedkhaledkaraman@gmail.com>> wrote:
> > 
> >     - Apply pylint and flake8 formatting rules to the script.
> >     - Use 'tempfile' instead of '/tmp' for creating temporary files.
> > 
> >     ---
> > 
> > Hello, folks.
> > 
> > This series seems forgotten. Can some of you perhaps take a look,
> > review, and possibly integrate some patches in a pull request?
> > 
> > Ahmed invested quite of time to improve the functionality and quality of
> > scripts, and they are truly useful for developers interested in
> > performance measurement.
> 
> The Python patches are indeed being merged slowly, but are not
> forgotten :) Eduardo sent just a pull request *yesterday* for
> patches he had queued *before* QEMU 5.1, that is more than 1 year
> ago!
> https://www.mail-archive.com/qemu-devel@nongnu.org/msg742228.html
> 
> I hope he will be able to process the other Python patches sent
> the last 12 months. He raised the problem few month ago saying he
> was overwhelmed and was looking for help from the community.
> Cleber helped a pair of times, I helped once, but then nobody
> popped up volunteering.
>

Yes, Python patches are not forgotten... they have been haunting me
every day and night for the last few months.  I have a *lot* of blame
to take here, so my sincere apologies.

One word of hope is that my resources (which were exhausted during the
last months towards the Avocado 82.0 LTS release, released last week)
are now freed.  And *a lot* of the Avocado features were eyeing QEMU,
so it's just natural that I will (because I want and have to) get
back to being more active and responsive.

> I agree this is a community problem, nobody wants to become the
> de-facto Python maintainer. Current maintainers are already busy
> solving problem with low-level languages such C.
> As a project, QEMU is evolving, using more and more Python, switched
> to Meson, we might have Rust code too. Learning that for current
> maintainers takes time. I guess we lack new contributors/maintainers
> with interest in Python & QEMU.
> 
> This is my simple/rough analysis, as John had the same problem
> 2/3 months ago, his patches were on the list unreviewed for various
> weeks. Same problem with Avocado patches, Lukas sent a series a bit
> before Ahmed and it is still unreviewed:
> https://www.mail-archive.com/qemu-devel@nongnu.org/msg737272.html
>

ACK.  This is a good real example of my previous abstract explanation
above.

So, besides me getting back with more resources to review and maintain
the Python pathes, I have also requested Willian Rampazzo (thanks!) to
keep an eye on those patches and help with reviews.

> Alex Bennée recently said:
> 
>  "review time is the currency of qemu-devel ;-)"
> 
> We might be failing at explaining new contributors the importance
> of peer-review, as this helps a lot maintainers. It is described
> in the wiki but maybe new contributors don't read it, we don't
> remember them to:
> https://wiki.qemu.org/Contribute/SubmitAPatch#Participating_in_Code_Review
> and:
> https://wiki.qemu.org/Contribute/SubmitAPatch#Return_the_favor
> 
> My 2 cents...
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Phil.
>

So while more help is always welcome, I do sincerely hope with myself
and Willian back into the loop, the Python patches won't lag behind
anymore.

And thanks for raising the awareness of the issue Phil!

- Cleber.

> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Aleksandar
>

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