First of all, I'd like to give a big Thank You to all the hackers and
slackers that make Postgres great. You've really done an amazing job.
I'll step up and take a healthy portion of the blame here. I enjoy the
awesome features & fixes that all of you put out year after year, but I
have yet to contribute anything. For what it's worth, I'm sorry. If
more guys like me could find some time to step up our game a little, we
wouldn't even be having this conversation. But we're still left with
the fact that there is too much code and not enough review.
Honestly, there is a lot of work for committers to do even when all the
patches have been through sufficient code review. Slogging through 4
months of CF patches without adequate review is enough to make anybody
throw up their hands and quit.
The best thing we can do to improve Postgres right now and over the long
term is to make sure that doesn't happen. Anybody who is on this list
is a valued Postgres contributor, and that's why Josh has been reaching
out. Maybe the term slacker offended some people, but he's basically
saying that code review is an essential contribution, perhaps more
essential than most new patches themselves at this point. He's asking
for help from those of you with the skill, experience, and established
desire to contribute to the growth of Postgres.
Coordinating volunteers for anything is a frustrating process. I'm sure
some people on the list shouldn't be on the list, and some people who
should be on the list aren't. Maybe the list shouldn't have been sent
in the first place. But it's a call for help born out of frustration,
and one that we could remedy by stepping up our communication a bit. 5
days is too short? How abut 7 or 10? No time to review a patch this
CF? Okay, good to know.
He's trying to tell us how we can best contribute. If I manage to find
the time to contribute something over the next couple of weeks, it would
border on the absurd if my contribution was some sort of patch
submission. Pretty much nothing I could write would be a more valuable
contribution than code review at this point.
So I'll drop Josh an email and let him know how much time I might be
able to contribute and when, and I'd suggest other people do the same.
Even if it's just a quick "Hey, I'm pretty busy the next couple weeks so
I'm not going to be able to review anything this CF." Being armed with
a little more information about the potential volunteer pool would
probably make his job as CFM much easier.
Thanks again to all of you for all your hard work.
Best regards,
Wolfe Whalen
-- Wolfe Whalen wolfe@quios.net
