On Thu, May 16, 2024 at 2:30 PM Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi, > > The original intent of CommitFests, and of commitfest.postgresql.org > by extension, was to provide a place where patches could be registered > to indicate that they needed to be reviewed, thus enabling patch > authors and patch reviewers to find each other in a reasonably > efficient way. I don't think it's working any more. I spent a good > deal of time going through the CommitFest this week, and I didn't get > through a very large percentage of it, and what I found is that the > status of the patches registered there is often much messier than can > be captured by a simple "Needs Review" or "Waiting on Author," and the > number of patches that are actually in need of review is not all that > large. For example, there are: > > - patches parked there by a committer who will almost certainly do > something about them after we branch > - patches parked there by a committer who probably won't do something > about them after we branch, but maybe they will, or maybe somebody > else will, and anyway this way we at least run CI
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> So, our CommitFest application has turned into a patch tracker. IMHO, > patch trackers intrinsically tend to suck, because they fill up with > garbage that nobody cares about, and nobody wants to do the colossal > amount of work that it takes to maintain them. But our patch tracker > sucks MORE, because it's not even intended to BE a general-purpose > patch tracker.
I was reflecting on why a general purpose patch tracker sounded appealing to me, and I realized that, at least at this time of year, I have a few patches that really count as "waiting on author" that I know I need to do additional work on before they need more review but which aren't currently my top priority. I should probably simply withdraw and re-register them. My justification was that I'll lose them if I don't keep them in the commitfest app. But, I could just, you know, save them somewhere myself instead of polluting the commitfest app with them. I don't know if others are in this situation. Anyway, I'm definitely currently guilty of parking.
One thing I think we've talked about before (but not done) is to basically have a CF called "parking lot", where you can park patches that aren't active in a commitfest but you also don't want to be dead. It would probably also be doable to have the cf bot run patches in that commitfest as well as the current one, if that's what people are using it for there.
