[ANNOUNCE] xorg-server 1.8.99.904

[Fernando Carrijo]

On Thu, 1 Jul 2010 13:24:02 -0600, Jonathan Corbet <corbet at lwn.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 01 Jul 2010 16:15:58 -0300
> Fernando Carrijo <fcarrijo at yahoo.com.br> wrote:
> 
> > For sure the information contained in git logs don't measure how high-level the
> > changes are being submitted, but it would be nice to devise some metrics, apart
> > from the usual LOC, which could help us visualize the architectural impact
> > caused by the big players.
> 
> I've wanted such a metric for a long time.  Lines of code is a terrible
> metric for work done in general, even if you don't want to make a
> distinction between "architectural" and other changes.  Changeset
> counts aren't really any better.  Among other things, both create poor
> incentives if people actually start to care about the numbers.

A viable solution would be to weight the hunks of a commit against a database of
scores for each file, or module, in a project. We could calibrate the database
by assigning higher scores to those files considered cornerstones, in lieu of
the less fundamental ones.

Thus, by maintaining a database such as the following:

    File                        Score
    ----                        -----
    *.{xml,man,txt}             1
    app/*                       3
    doc/*                       2
    driver/*.[ch]               3
    xserver/dix/*.[ch]          5
    xserver/hw/*.[ch]           4

we could run a script on a patch like this:

    --- a/dix/dispatch.c
    +++ b/dix/dispatch.c
    /* FIRST HUNK */
    /* SECOND HUNK */

    --- a/hw/xfree86/os-support/bus/Pci.c
    +++ b/hw/xfree86/os-support/bus/Pci.c
    /* THIRD HUNK */

and obtain a weighted score of 5 + 5 + 4 = 14 for the whole patch.

Here be dragons, though.

> That said, I've still not found a better way of trying to measure
> "who's doing the work," especially in the context of a high-bandwidth
> project like the kernel.  If anybody has any ideas, I'm all ears...

Me too!