From: Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>
Organization: PostgreSQL @ Sun
To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Feature freeze progress report
Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 09:43:19 -0700
User-Agent: KMail/1.8.2
Cc: Dave Page <dpage@postgresql.org>, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>,
	Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, Heikki Linnakangas <heikki@enterprisedb.com>,
	Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com>
References: <200705011452.l41EqPN10520@momjian.us>
	<46375C0B.9050305@postgresql.org>
In-Reply-To: <46375C0B.9050305@postgresql.org>
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Message-Id: <200705010943.19924.josh@agliodbs.com>

Bruce, 

> > The bottom line is if you had a system that was 100% perfect in
> > capturing all information about a patch, it only helps us 2% toward
> > reviewing the patch, and what is the cost of keeping 100% information?
>
> 2% for you or Tom reviewing a recently discussed, run-of-the mill patch.
> I suspect that %age will rise as the patch complexity increases and the
> reviewers experience decreases - which is exactly the situation that it
> would help to improve.

Moreover, what I'm looking for is tools which will:
1) allow existing reviewers to make better use of the time that they have, and
2) encourage/assist new reviewers in helping out, and
3) not bottleneck on the availability of a single project member

The current patch-queue process is failing to scale with the project: every 
release it gets to be more work for you & Tom to integrate the patches.  We 
need to think of new approaches to make the review process scale.  As a 
pointed example, you're about to go on tour for 2 weeks and patch review will 
stall while you're gone.  That's not sustainable.

If you don't think that a web tool will help, then what *do* you think will 
help?  Just "soldiering on" isn't really an answer, and I notice that you're 
very quick to come up with reasons why anything we might try will fail, but 
extremely reluctant to make suggestions for improvement.

==============

Dave,

> Also note that I'm not saying I can produce a system that's 100% correct
> - just one that will capture the posts that keep the patch ID in their
> subject line *automatically* - meaning you don't have to worry about
> keeping threads for the existing queue or tracking the patch status.

Is there a reason why the system needs to be primarily based on e-mail?  I was 
thinking that the patch manager would be entirely a web tool, with people 
submitting and modifying a patch directly through a web interface.  This 
would be lots easier to build than an e-mail based system, and also far more 
useful from a monitoring standpoint.  I've worked with e-mail based systems 
like RT and OTRS, and frankly they're extremely high-maintenance and suffer a 
large amount of "lost" information.

We could also build a number of other things into the web tool, like a "You 
are submitting this patch under BSD" disclaimer and pointers to the Developer 
FAQ and other relevant documents.

-- 
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco