[ANN] Please use Gerrit from now on for Patch Review

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 08:57:28AM +0100, Caolán McNamara wrote:
> On Mon, 2012-06-18 at 12:09 +0200, Bjoern Michaelsen wrote:
> > gerrit is documented and ready to go. 
> 
> Can I get superquick overview of "why gerrit?". e.g. the problems we
> have that gerrit fixes. My biggest concern has always been that patches
> go into gerrit and disappear in an out of sight out of mind sort of
> thing.

Here is a list of things from the top of my head:
- patches are not sprinkled in a incredable high-volume mailing list that
  casual contributors will not follow
- asking new contributors to subscribe to that list is a barrier to entry on
  its own
- status of patches is intrinsically tracked, no "ups, that one was picked
  already, but never reported to the ml" anymore
- patches are tracked in a sane way -- this will allow working/reviewing the
  patches from git/commandline, the web, on IRC with stuff like:
  - request backporting to release branch on IRC
  - notify of a review request on IRC
  - daily mail of open patches to the dev-list
- providing fixed and updated versions of the patch works in a way that is not
  confusing and errorprone
  (see for example the iterations of:
  https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/#/c/179/
  and imagine it on a mailing list)
- might or might not be a topic: We can script to check for the patch license
  automatically
- tinderboxing (a topic on its own):
  - allows pre-master build testing of patches:
    - this will hopefully reduce the amount of build breakers
    - give everyone access to a windows build _before_ the patch hits master
    - same for subsequent tests
  - probabilistic commit testing (see other mail)
  - tinderboxes mailing down a new contributor with 50 mails "one of you did
    evil things" is the safest way to not make them come back again.

Note that even when we switch the repo over gerrit, everyone who had direct
commit access to fdo, will get direct commit access (bypassing all reviews and
tests) again in the beginning(*). However, it will enable all of the above and
finally get us moving there.

I forgot prolly a lot. Norbert, any additions?

Best,

Bjoern


(*) That is, if you did the initial setup there on time. You were all asked to
get yourself an account on gerrit more than a month ago. Dont blame the admins
if you stumble in with 400 others in the last minute.