[Libreoffice-qa] Gerrit auto-merge

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

On Mon, Jun 04, 2012 at 08:02:43AM +0200, David Tardon wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 02, 2012 at 10:51:25AM +0200, Bjoern Michaelsen wrote:
> > So -- people with commit rights are not the issue:
> > - can commit directly to master on their own responsibility
> >   (this should be discouraged, except for urgent buildbreaker fixes that save
> >    everyone pain)
> 
> Do I see the beginning of some "CWS" process here? Anyway, if the
> objective is to avoid build problems, then I think it is completely
> misplaced, because:
> 
> * no amount of reviewing is going to cover all the configurations people
>   build with
> * most of build problems are on Windows and MacOS X and we do not have
>   enough people there (c.f. the recent threads regarding testing of
>   feature/gbuild_*)
> * we already have tinderboxes for exactly that reason

A build breaker causes 10-20 times the ressources if it is found after hitting
master compared to when it is found before that. Thats because 10-20 devs will:
- have their build break
- check how they broke it
- find out they didnt break it
- find the real breaker
- try to fix it
- find (or coordinate) with others who fix it too (two different fixes for the
  same issue are likely bad too)

> Why not, if it is not mandatory... But I, for one, am not expecting any
> spectacular results.

I dont expect spectacular results. I expect a lot more visibility on what is
going on in a particular area of code and better early "collision detection"
between larger efforts. And it makes changes more transparent for newcomers.
Around the Hackfest I heard multiple reports by casual volunteers that they
can not follow the dev-list as it is too much traffic, too much noise. Gerrit
might give you a more specific overview on what is happening in the area of
your interest.

> >   about it (in which care it is sane to hold back until this is clarified)
> 
> > - if you want to be faster, team up with someone for mutual review and you can
> >   be as fast as you want
> 
> I do not think it is a good idea to start to do that for master commits
> wholesale. We have hardly enough people to review fixes for stable
> branches.

Caolan is our top commiter. According to
http://blogs.linux.ie/caolan/2012/05/20/8000-commits/ his last 1000 commits
where at ~6 commits/day. Do you think it would take more than 10 minutes to
skim over 6 commits, if they are presented in an easy accessable way? I dont
think so.

Best,

Bjoern