[development] Listen

[Dries Buytaert]

On 02 Jul 2007, at 21:05, Augustin (Beginner) wrote:
> My main point is: please do listen to people who are better known  
> than I am,
> when they talk about some overdue systemic changes.

The main reason that keeps patches from getting committed faster is  
the lack of good reviews.  The main challenge is to increase the  
amount and the quality of patch reviews and to reduce the number of  
silly "+1"s.

People posting a "+1" waste a lot of people's time -- it makes dozens  
of people recheck the issue, and it does not buy you any more respect  
or trust.  If we can stop posting "+1"s (or "subscribe"s for that  
matter), that would save me some time, it would increase the signal  
to noise ratio and it would avoid the false sense of support.

We should also change the perception that RTBC means "a core  
committer needs to look at this".  When a patch is RTBC, it still  
means that everyone needs to look at it, and that's part of the  
reason why many patches are still in the RTBC queue.  I'll try to be  
faster to send back these to the "code needs (better) review" status,  
if that helps. Ultimately, this is something everyone can help with.   
If a patch is in RTBC for too long, it probably means it could use  
more quality reviews.

Maybe we need a 'decay feature' that sets a patch back to 'code needs  
review' after 2 weeks as RTBC?

During the next couple of weeks, I'll pay close attention to my  
workflow and usage patterns surrounding the issue queues.  I'll try  
to gather some statistics of why patches are rejected, and how much  
time is spent doing what.  How frequently do I revisit an issue, and  
how often that means something useful was added to the issue?  Things  
like that.  I'll also keep an eye open for things that would help us.

Automatically checking whether a patch still applies would be useful  
already.

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