Automatic buildbot verification

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi,

On Thu, Oct 02, 2014 at 05:48:49PM +0200, Miklos Vajna wrote:
> Question is what would be the best to mark these changes. Should we use
> a specially named "topic" for these changes, and reserve that name for
> this purpose? Or should the developer just +2 the change? I'm open to
> suggestions.

So, the canonical way is to keep "CodeReview" for human review and "Verify" for
mechanical review. So the usual workflow is:

1/ Patch gets uploaded
2/ Human gives it a +1 or +2 CR
3/ The buildbot walks over all changes that have CR +1 or +2 and testbuilds them. On
   success the change gets marked +1 Verified.
4/ A bot walks over the changes and cherry-picks everything which is +2 CR/+1 Verified.

This is e.g. how it works at openstack.

Thus a reviewer can:
- either mark a change as +2 CodeReview, which means: "Merge directly when it
  builds/tests successfully."
- or mark a change as +1 CodeReview, which means: "Testbuild this, but dont automerge."

Also note that in we could customize gerrit to have an additional row beyond
"CodeReview" and "Verified". gerrit supports as many custom rows as you like
there. But I really think that is a bad idea. CodeReview and Verified are
exactly what we need -- no additional stuff to document and confuse newcomers
needed.

Best,

Bjoern