[pulseaudio-discuss] Rethinking how we do reviews

[Tanu Kaskinen]

On Thu, 2016-03-31 at 10:55 +0530, Arun Raghavan wrote:
> On Wed, 2016-03-30 at 15:43 +0300, Tanu Kaskinen wrote:
> > 
> > On Mon, 2016-03-28 at 12:43 +0530, Arun Raghavan wrote:
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Hello,
> > > I'm sure it's not shocking or surprising to state that our patch review
> > > bandwidth is significantly lower than the rate at which contributions
> > > are coming in.
> > > 
> > > It is also quite demotivating to send patches to the list and have to
> > > wait weeks to hear about them, and kudos to all our patient
> > > contributors and everyone who's been pitching in on the review process,
> > > especially Tanu who's taken up the bulk of the heavy-lifting on this
> > > front.
> > > 
> > > While having Patchwork in place helps keep track of patches so we don't
> > > lose some through the cracks, it does not help decrease our review
> > > turnaround time by a whole lot.
> > > 
> > > To this end, I propose that we ease our review policy a bit. My
> > > proposal is that:
> > > 
> > > * Committers should have the ability to go ahead and push out their own
> > > changes without review, except ...
> > > 
> > > * User-facing changes should have some announcement and/or discussion
> > > (changing dependencies, new modules, etc.)
> > > 
> > > * Changes to API or protocol should undergo review at least to the
> > > extent of the API/protocol change
> > > 
> > > * Large infrastructure changes should go through a full review
> > > (slightly subjective, but I think we can leave this to individual
> > > judgment)
> > > 
> > > Our current way of doing things is good for keeping up code quality,
> > > but I think over time, with such a large patch backlog, we end up
> > > spending more and more time performing reviews, and less and less time
> > > working on features. This becomes quite draining and drops our overall
> > > productivity in contributing to the project.
> > > 
> > > At this point, I guess this is mostly for Tanu to buy into, and maybe
> > > David if he'd like to continue contributing at least on the ALSA side.
> > > Thoughts and suggestions from others are still welcome, of course.
> > The point of reviewing is to save time: it's more efficient to catch
> > bugs in review than debug them in production, and making the code as
> > easy to understand as possible saves time later when reading the code.
> > If this assumption of saving time is correct, isn't it then misguided
> > to skip reviews so that you could spend more time on writing new
> > features? Either the uncatched bugs start to pile up, or you won't have
> > time for writing new features anyway, since you'll be fixing bugs.
> We have two opposing axes to optimise along. The first is code quality,
> as you point out. The other is developer motivation.
> 
> My feeling is that being able to work on things and push them out
> without a long wait would help us feel more productive and motivated to
> work on all aspects of the project.
> 
> With the current system, I think we're spending more and more time
> reviewing things and waiting for reviews.
> 
> Having the ability to work on things and push them out provides a much
> shorter path between "this is something I'd like to do" and "this thing
> is done". This allows for a positive feedback loop, and I think that
> will bolster our motivation to perform reviews, bug triaging, and
> everything else.

That sounds like a plausible theory, although I don't personally feel
demotivated by the large amount of time it takes for my own patches to
get merged. If you really think that your review bandwidth increases if
your own patches go through faster, it seems to me that I could
prioritize reviewing your patches over others, and that way get more
reviews from you. What do you think?

-- 
Tanu