[Sugar-devel] Code Review process changes

[Sascha Silbe]

Hi!

Bernie, Tomeu and I had a nice discussion regarding the Code Review 
process on #sugar yesterday. To sum it up:

Several contributors are hindered or even put off by the current 
process. It often takes more time to handle mere technicalities (save 
patch to file, create ticket in Trac, attach patch, wait for review, 
push) than it takes to fix the bug. In addition there's a large backlog 
because reviews are currently handled only by module maintainers. The 
latter issue turned out to be at least partly due to misunderstandings 
about who "can" do reviews.

We'd like to try a different approach that's used by many successful 
projects - both small and large ones.
Patches are sent to sugar-devel for review. Every Sugar developer (*) 
can review patches (and multiple reviews are quite welcome). Since the 
number of developers with commit access is limited, we have a sufficient 
level of QA even without limiting who "can" do reviews.

There are a number of systems to track the status of patches sent to the 
list (e.g. Patchwork [1]), but as this adds complexity (and yet another 
system to maintain) again we'd like to try without at first.

Personal note:
Instead of using a patch tracker, we could also ask patch submitters to 
file tickets at bugs.sugarlabs.org if there has been no review for, say, 
3 days. This gives a streamlined process for most patches while still 
ensuring nothing gets lost.


(*) We defined "Sugar developer" as "anybody who has made at least one 
change that entered mainline".
[1] http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/

CU Sascha

-- 
http://sascha.silbe.org/
http://www.infra-silbe.de/
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