[drupal-devel] more core comitters

[Dries Buytaert]

On 29 Jul 2005, at 11:17, Gerhard Killesreiter wrote:
>> I said this before and I'll say it again: the problem is not the
>> committing but the reviewing.
>
> No, one affects the other. In the past weeks I haven't reviewed any
> patches because I knew that both you and Steven were too busy to  
> commit
> them and that by the time you'd have the time, I'd need to look at the
> stuff again. This is discouraging. I am pretty sure others are  
> thinking
> the same.

If a patch is tested, reviewed and benchmarked it takes me one minute  
to process it.  In such a scenario, I can commit up to 60 patches in  
an hour, or empty the patch queue in an evening.  This won't happen  
as I often spend 30 minutes testing, reviewing and benchmarking a  
particular patch.  Testing big patches like the node revision patch  
easily takes me 1 hour.  The node revision patch could have been  
committed weeks ago if only enough people cared about it.  Adding  
core committers doesn't help.  Adding more status flags to the  
project issues makes a patch's status more explicit (good) but  
doesn't change the fact that we'll need to spend a couple hours  
testing the node revision patch.

>> I tend to ignore +1's unless I sense that the commenter put time and
>> effort in evaluating a patch.
>
> See above for my reasons not to invest both. Contrary to what Bèr
> believes, I have no time to waste either.

I'm perfectly happy with you -- or other people -- not investing time/ 
energy in reviewing patches.  If you believe testing, reviewing and  
benchmarking patches is a waste of your time, then I guess I "waste"  
at least 2 hours of my time a day -- especially because many reviews  
go unanswered.  Make no mistake, I'm happy to "waste" my time  
reviewing other people's work, including yours.  :-)  Saying that  
less gets done during my absence, just means that fewer patches get  
reviewed.  If the node revision patch (our running example) was  
tested extensively, I could commit it from Italy.  For example, I  
committed some patches earlier today.  However, when I don't have the  
time it takes to test it (like now), it sometimes goes unreviewed,  
and hence, uncommitted.

> I am pretty sure that these can be minimized. We've had three core
> committers in the past and it worked.

Not quite.  Steven and Kjartan let me review their changes first.   
Steven only started to commit "independently" one year ago, and even  
now, he still consults me about bigger changes (and often, I consult  
him too).

--
Dries Buytaert  ::  http://www.buytaert.net/