Thread: Commitfest: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
Folks, We're almost half way through the commitfest, and so I'll start with: The Good: - Most patches still in play have a reviewer. - It's possible for one person to post 5 reviews in a day. Robert Haas actually did this on his own time yesterday. - New people have been reviewing patches, at least up to the Submission criteria. The Bad: - There is 1 (one) patch marked "Committed" or "Ready for Committer," where neither the author nor reviewer is a committer. This basically means we have approximately one RRReviewer. The Ugly: - Patches are not getting even basic QA. The Bad and the Ugly are fixable, and here's how. At the moment, we've got 7 basic review criteria http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Reviewing_a_Patch, 5 of which can be accomplished with C skills somewhere between 0 and tiny. These are: 1. Submission review (skills needed: patch, English comprehension) 2. Usability review (skills needed: test-fu, ability to find and read spec) 3. Feature test (skills needed: patch, configure, make, pipe errors to log) 4. Performance review (skills needed: ability to time performance) 5. Coding review (skills needed: guideline comparison, experience with portability issues, minor C-reading skills) I'd like to set as a goal that every patch in this commitfest get those levels of review. You do not need C skills[1]. You do not need to be a genius database engine hacker[2]. You just need to be diligent and want to move the project ahead. If you haven't yet, get signed in and start reviewing patches. Sign in with your community login, and let's get going :) https://commitfest.postgresql.org/action/commitfest_view?id=7 In case you were wondering, what I'm doing here is part of step 7. If you think that getting all outstanding patches through step 5 is not doable, let me know. If you think it is, this is your chance to help make it happen. Write back either way. Cheers, David. [1] If you do have them, help out with step 6, too. [2] If you are one, help out with step 6, too. -- David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/ Phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Yahoo!: dfetter Skype: davidfetter XMPP: david.fetter@gmail.com iCal: webcal://www.tripit.com/feed/ical/people/david74/tripit.ics Remember to vote! Consider donating to Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 6:03 AM, David Fetter <david@fetter.org> wrote: > The Good: > - Most patches still in play have a reviewer. As far as I remember, there were discussions about the issue "A patch has a reviewer, but in Needs Review state for several weeks " in 9.0 development. Do we have any plans for it? According to the commitfest app, one patch has only one reviewer at once. A new reviewer might avoid reviewing a patch that have another reviewer already. -- Itagaki Takahiro
On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 9:11 PM, Itagaki Takahiro <itagaki.takahiro@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 6:03 AM, David Fetter <david@fetter.org> wrote: >> The Good: >> - Most patches still in play have a reviewer. > > As far as I remember, there were discussions about the issue > "A patch has a reviewer, but in Needs Review state for several weeks " > in 9.0 development. > > Do we have any plans for it? According to the commitfest app, one patch > has only one reviewer at once. A new reviewer might avoid reviewing > a patch that have another reviewer already. No, the column is very clearly labelled "Reviewers", not "Reviewer". And we have certainly had patches with more than one person's name in that field in the past. The issue is rather that we don't have enough people reviewing. We haven't had enough people volunteer to do reviews to even assign ONE person to each patch, let alone two. There are, as of this writing, SEVEN patches that have no reviewer at all. Of course, several of the committers, including you, me, and Tom, have been working our way through the patches. And that is great. But the point of the CommitFest process is that everyone is supposed to pitch in and help out, not just the committers. That is not happening, and it's a problem. This process does not work and will not scale if the committers are responsible for doing all the work on every patch from beginning to end. That has never worked, and the fact that we have a few more committers now doesn't change that. -- Robert Haas EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com The Enterprise Postgres Company
On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 10:18 AM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote: > No, the column is very clearly labelled "Reviewers", not "Reviewer". > And we have certainly had patches with more than one person's name in > that field in the past. The issue is rather that we don't have enough > people reviewing. We haven't had enough people volunteer to do > reviews to even assign ONE person to each patch, let alone two. There > are, as of this writing, SEVEN patches that have no reviewer at all. Some of them might be too difficult to review. For example, replication or snapshot management requires special skills to review. I'm worrying about new reviewers hesitate to review a patch that has a previous reviewer, and then, if they think the remaining patches are too difficult for them, they would just leave the commitfest page. -- Itagaki Takahiro
On 9/28/2010 8:33 PM, Itagaki Takahiro wrote: > On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 10:18 AM, Robert Haas<robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote: >> No, the column is very clearly labelled "Reviewers", not "Reviewer". >> And we have certainly had patches with more than one person's name in >> that field in the past. The issue is rather that we don't have enough >> people reviewing. We haven't had enough people volunteer to do >> reviews to even assign ONE person to each patch, let alone two. There >> are, as of this writing, SEVEN patches that have no reviewer at all. > > Some of them might be too difficult to review. For example, replication > or snapshot management requires special skills to review. > > I'm worrying about new reviewers hesitate to review a patch that has > a previous reviewer, and then, if they think the remaining patches are > too difficult for them, they would just leave the commitfest page. > If I might... I think it would be good to have new reviewers teamed with experienced reviewer on a single patch. Let the newbie have a crack at it while having a safety net too. Good for the newbie, good for the project. You just need a way to assign them. Message's are already sent out saying "if you wanna help, email xyz to get started". A message like that could be added to the web page. The commitfest overlord could assign the newbie a patch and a sponsor, saying "dear newbie you'll be working with bob on this patch, ask him any questions about the process, you'll both do the review and you can compare your work to his, and learn the process along the way". The sponsor could answer any dumb questions off list, and every once and a while say "Hey, that's a great thing to post to the mailing list for everyone to review". And/Or/Also, maybe a snippet on the page saying "dont feel like you have to do a full review, if you can only do a part, do it, and someone else can do the rest." And/Or: "feel free to review something someone else is reviewing, more eyes = better prize". -Andy
On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 9:33 PM, Itagaki Takahiro <itagaki.takahiro@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 10:18 AM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote: >> No, the column is very clearly labelled "Reviewers", not "Reviewer". >> And we have certainly had patches with more than one person's name in >> that field in the past. The issue is rather that we don't have enough >> people reviewing. We haven't had enough people volunteer to do >> reviews to even assign ONE person to each patch, let alone two. There >> are, as of this writing, SEVEN patches that have no reviewer at all. > > Some of them might be too difficult to review. For example, replication > or snapshot management requires special skills to review. > > I'm worrying about new reviewers hesitate to review a patch that has > a previous reviewer, and then, if they think the remaining patches are > too difficult for them, they would just leave the commitfest page. That's a legitimate concern, but I am not sure how much of a problem it is in practice. Most people who become round-robin reviewers are getting pulled into the process a little more than just stumbling across the CF page by happenstance, or at least I hope they are. Not all patches can benefit from multiple reviewers, but CF managers can and should encourage multiple reviews of those that can. However, at the moment, the problem is that regardless of who is assigned to do what, we're not getting enough reviews done. -- Robert Haas EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com The Enterprise Postgres Company