Message-ID: <51153CCD.7060609@agliodbs.com>
Date: Fri, 08 Feb 2013 09:58:37 -0800
From: Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>
Organization: PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
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To: Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net>
CC: Daniel Farina <daniel@heroku.com>,
	"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com>, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>,
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Subject: Re: Considering Gerrit for CFs
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>> I don't see the model as broken either.  Just the tooling, which is why
>> I'm looking at tooling.  As in, I'm looking for better tooling in order
> 
> Yet you are suggesting tooling that requires a change in the model?

Well, my fantasy is a version of Gerrit which accepts email from
-hackers and proceeds accordingly.  However, I also happen to know
intimately how difficult automated processing of email is -- if we wait
for a tool which can do this, we're going to be stuck with the existing
system forever.

> I think you are missing a fundamental part in this - which is "0.
> don't negatively affect the efficiency of existing committer time".
> I'm not saying it necessarily does (though I think it does, but that's
> not a proven point), but that has to be a pretty high prity.

Realistically, the only way out of the current committer bottleneck is
to recruit more reviewers, contributors, and committers.  In the 9.3
timeline, we're going to have to look at ways we believe will accomplish
recruitment and promotion, even if it means sacrificing committer time
(and thus, 9.4 features) in the short run.  If we remain focused on
maximizing the time of existing major contributors to the exclusion of
recruitment, things will never get better.

Or to put it another way: as the EU has proven, Austerity Plans are a
loser's game.

>> Of these two, (2) is actually the more critical. We have been losing,
>> not gaining, active committers and reviewers for the last couple years.
>>  Clearly "do more of what we've been doing" is a losing strategy.   We
>> need to be sucessfully moving people up the contributor chain if we're
>> ever going to get out of this "not enough reviewers" hole.
> 
> Agreed. But do you have any actual proof that the problem is in "we
> loose reviewers because we're relying on email"?

I don't think email is the specific issue.  I think the issues are
mostly people issues.  The only reason I care about email vs. not-email
is the technical impossibility of developing a system which can
automatically turn patch and review emails into a trackable and
transparent view.

There are a bunch of other issues I'd like to discuss, but I agree that
they should wait until after CF4.

> It would probably be a good thing to discuss the tooling there, too.

Yes.

> I agree it's way too many step. Several of those can certainly be made
> more efficient now that we have a more sane archives, well within the
> scope of the current system.

Right.  My concern is that the people who have to do that are exactly
the people whose time is already the most scarce.

-- 
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com


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