[pulseaudio-discuss] Patch review status wiki page updated

[Tanu Kaskinen]

On Thu, 2014-04-24 at 15:30 -0300, Felipe Sateler wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 1:40 PM, Tanu Kaskinen
> <tanu.kaskinen at linux.intel.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, 2014-04-18 at 15:57 +0000, Felipe Sateler wrote:
> >> Background:
> >>
> >> I recently joined the PA maintenance team in debian (Hi All!). As I have
> >> been sifting through old (downstream) bug reports I have forwarded some
> >> things (as did Balint for the patches we carry), but tracking their
> >> status is not easy, as it requires searching through the mailing list
> >> archives to see if the patch had objections, or maybe was resubmitted, or
> >> was NACKed.
> >>
> >> What would be ideal from my POV is a single (unchanging) URL per patch,
> >> so that I can point my downstream tracker to that and then I can simply
> >> go check if the patch was merged or not. Currently the forward notes
> >
> > What do you mean by "forward notes"? Is it some file that Debian PA
> > maintainers are maintaining?
> 
> The debian bug tracker has a concept of a "forwarded to" address. This
> is a freeform text (can be an email, url, or anything). It is very
> useful when something is not really a packaging issue but rather an
> upstream problem. There are even some tools that notify us when the
> bug is fixed if the pointed to url is a known bug tracker (like
> bugzilla).
> 
> For example, you can see this bug which I recently forwarded to the bugzilla:
> 
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=561780
> 
> This is useful not only for patches, but also for bugs even when there
> is no patch (yet).
> 
> >
> >> do
> >> not really work as the pointer is to a mailing list archive, and the
> >> discussion could have moved on since the first submission. In other
> >> words, it is hard to keep track of the stuff we have forwarded.
> >
> > What scenario are you thinking of when you say "the discussion could
> > have moved on since the first submission"? The result of the first
> > submission should be visible in the mailing list thread, so if you have
> > a link to the patch in the list archive, doesn't that make it pretty
> > simple to check the patch status?
> 
> Not really. Mailing lists archives are not very helpful in this
> regard. If I submit a patch this month and you (N)ACK it next month
> the thread is broken in the web archive.

You're just using the wrong web archive :) Check out gmane.org, that's
what the patch status wiki page uses for referencing patches. Gmane
retains the threading properly (and I also like its overall UI more than
Pipermail).

> > If another submission has been made in
> > a different thread, shouldn't you update the "forward notes" at the same
> > time you submit the new patch?
> 
> Yes, if I submit a new version of the patch, then I should update the
> forward note. But if a third party does (say, a different/updated
> patch fixes the same issue the original patch), they may not update
> the forward note. The issue is that changing URLs means having to
> remember updating the note, and for that I need to wait for my message
> to appear in the archive so I can know the url. Moreover, if I visit
> an old bug, I still have to check if the patch was resubmitted at a
> later date without updating the forward note.

I see your point, although using bugzilla isn't a silver bullet either.
If you file a patch via bugzilla, a third party can still send a patch
to the mailing list, fixing the same issue without knowing anything
about the bug you created.

> In any case, I will from now on send patches with git send-email.

Thanks!

-- 
Tanu