On 08/19/2011 10:44 AM, Russell Bryant wrote:
Greetings,
I would like to offer up an alternative patch workflow for discussion.
Currently we're using the mailing list for posting patches and reviews.
How would you feel about using a code review tool to manage the patch
workflow? The main reason I have for proposing the change is to help
ensure that things don't get dropped and that it's very clear to
everyone what the status is of each pending patch.
Organizations or projects use process to deal with too much complexity
in the current systems in place. Process adds a level of complexity
which theoretically is abstracted by the fact that everyone can become
deep experts in The Process, hiding the "details" of the organizational
interactions. These "details" are often strong relationships with
fellow developers and deep technical expertise in the task at hand.
If the problem to be solved is the concern that patches not be dropped
and everyone is clear where their patch stands, are you sure those are
problems the Matahari community suffers from? I personally haven't
witnessed these complaints.
There is value in sticking to bare-bones process methodologies, even if
it means a contributor submits a patch more then once as a follow up.
Without a mailing list review of patches, I'd have less idea what was
happening with the project.
Regards
-steve
Specifically, the tool I have in mind is Review Board [1].
fedorahosted
has a reviewboard instance up that (I presume) we could use [2].
Q&A:
1) Well what about keeping discussions on the mailing list?
If we used this tool, we could still have code review discussions echoed
to the mailing list so everyone still sees what's going on. As an
example, the qpid project is using Review Board [3] and review requests
are sent to their dev mailing list [4].
2) How do you post patches?
Here is a general workflow overview [5]. Posting patches is pretty easy
to do from the command line. There is a tool called post-review [6]
that you use.
3) I hate the web. If I can't do it from my terminal, it's terrible.
Ok, well that's not a question. I do respect your right to have an
opinion, even if it's wrong. I do believe that there are some tools
coming in future versions of Review Board that will allow you to do
everything from the command line, but it's not there yet.
[1]
http://www.reviewboard.org/
[2]
http://fedorahosted.org/reviewboard/
[3]
https://reviews.apache.org/groups/qpid/
[4]
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/qpid-dev/201108.mbox/browser
[5]
http://www.reviewboard.org/docs/manual/1.5/users/getting-started/workflow/
[6]
http://www.reviewboard.org/docs/manual/1.5/users/tools/post-review/#post-...
Let me know what you think!
Thanks,