[Mesa-dev] [PATCH v2] docs: Document GitLab merge request process (email alternative)

[Jason Ekstrand]

On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 11:07 AM Axel Davy <davyaxel0 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 13/12/2018 17:57, Mathias Fröhlich wrote:
> > Hi,
> > Initially it seemed to me that I am about the only one sticking with
> mailing lists.
> > And I personally feel like a too small contributor to really try to
> influence your
> > decisions too much. But these recent hand full of mails all tell me that
> I am not
> > that alone. I personally did contribute to several projects during the
> past years.
> > All that only in part time, thus it had to be *very* efficient for
> myself. And that is
> > something that I achieved by a consistent 'interface' to all those
> projects. Just
> > my widely used and highly convenient mail client. So, all that worked in
> a sufficiently
> > efficient way because I could combine this kind of 'work' even with my
> private mail
> > that I could handle in between with that single 'interface'. So going to
> any web site
> > there is already a detour and having multiple of them for each such
> project gives an
> > even longer detour. Okay today it's mostly mesa that is left as well as
> a communication
> > middle end used in vizsim applications. But going away too far away from
> a mailing list
> > will be mostly a loss of efficiency for me.
> > As I said, my two cents, that should not keep you all from doing changes
> that finally
> > increase your all efficiency ...
> >
> > best
> >
> > Mathias
> >
> >
> >
>
> Hi,
>
>
> I have to add my voice here as well.
>
> Even though I do not feel able to give review for most of the mesa code
> base,
> I appreciate to have all patches in the mailing list in my mail client.
>
>  From time to time, I give feedback for some set of patches, for example
> when I see patches related to dri3 or that could impact Nine.
>
> It also enables me to get an overview of all the recent works and new
> features Nine could use.
>
> I feel like if most patches go through MR without getting a mail
> feedback, I would not be able to do those as efficiently.
>

I find it interesting that multiple people have had this same sentiment.
For me, the exact opposite is true.  I'm someone who is responsible for
tracking and reviewing dozens of series at a time often with many patches
each.  My current review backlog is probably 200 patches or more.  Having
them in a linear stream in my mail isn't at all what I want because once I
blow past the first page (50 e-mails) stuff easily gets lost.  The ability
to look at them at the series level, filter by tags, etc. is a huge
advantage.  I also really like the fact that GitLab pulls all the comments
for the series together which makes cross-patch discussions easier to track.


> I would appreciate if I could *flag* some files or directories, and when
> a MR impacts those (for example dri3 files, gallium interface, gallium
> Nine, etc),
> I could get an automated mail with a summary of the MR, in order to
> encourage me to look at it.
>

You can at least sort-of.  If you go here:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/labels

You can subscribe to an individual label and it will e-mail you every time
a MR is posted and tagged with that label.  Now, it will probably take a
bit before we get label discipline sufficient that you can rely on it but
the mechanism is there.

--Jason
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