[development] Very concerned over Drupal's core development

[Earl Miles]

Gerhard Killesreiter wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Earl Miles schrieb:
>> Angela Byron wrote:
>>> We have this kind of decentralized development model, where one or two
>>> people are solely responsible for code with basically zero peer
>>> review. It's called contrib. And it's notoriously filled with
>>> sub-standard, shoddily documented code that needs to be closely
>>> inspected by individual site maintainers before being deployed on any
>>> serious production sites.
>> I stop following your argument here. The only way this argument holds up
>> is that if *all* of contrib is substandard crap. It is not. There is a
>> level of contrib that is above that, and there is a reason those
>> particular pieces of contrib are above that. Chew on that.
> 
> Because they follow core's development model?

They don't, actually, or at least, mine don't. I don't post patches and 
have half a dozen people review them before I commit code. If someone 
posts a patch, chances are there's only 1 or 2 reviews on it, and I have 
to do the real review prior to deciding whether or not to commit it. 
Sometimes some patch will be both simple enough and important enough for 
more than a couple people to review it, but that is the exception, not 
the rule. Right now, it's because I try to hold myself to a high 
standard. And I admit that I can be sloppy and commit too fast due to 
the workload, but ultimately even with that I do a better job than a lot 
of contrib, simply because I try to see the bigger picture prior to 
committing.

The reason I think more committers in targeted areas will work is 
because I think it will create more activity in those areas. The people 
who have the right to commit will have a more vested interest, and 
therefore you will get more of their time, effort and energy, plus any 
that they can draw to them. webchick commented earlier that one of the 
issues was providing an incentive to do reviews. And that's certainly a 
key issue, right there. There isn't much incentive to do reviews. 
There's the good of the project, but there is no pride of ownership in a 
review. The pride of ownership drives a lot of the initial development, 
and it drives the committers, but the reviewers?

I cannot remember a time in the 4 years I've been with this project that 
we haven't had a longstanding complaint about lack of good patch 
reviews. That is one of the first complaints I heard then, and it is one 
of the complaints I hear now. It has not changed, and asking people to 
do more reviews has already proven to be ineffective in combatting the 
issue.

Give your reviewers some ownership and you'll find a lot more people 
interested in reviewing.