[Mesa-dev] Improved Patch review using Gerrit

[Andreas Hartmetz]

On Friday 10 May 2013 14:17:47 Eric Anholt wrote:
> Andreas Hartmetz <ahartmetz at gmail.com> writes:
> > On Wednesday 08 May 2013 13:33:37 Eric Anholt wrote:
> >> Christoph Brill <egore911 at egore911.de> writes:
> >> > Hi list,
> >> > 
> >> > I'm trying to follow the patches and patchsets sent to mesa-dev
> >> > and
> >> > really like the process of how they get reviewed. It's a good way
> >> > of
> >> > catching bugs before they get committed. But currently this
> >> > approach
> >> > has a downside (at least for me): It's easy to miss a patch and
> >> > happens from time to time to others as well (see
> >> > http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/2013-May/039178.ht
> >> > ml )
> >> > 
> >> > Has anyone thought about using Gerrit for code reviews (like done
> >> > for
> >> > Libreoffice at https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/ )? I like the way
> >> > it
> >> > integrates with git and might be a good idea to use for mesa-dev
> >> > (and
> >> > maybe even dri-devel) as well.
> >> 
> >> Yeah, we've thought about it, and even asked fdo admins to install
> >> a
> >> jenkins setup for continuous integration as a prelude to possibly
> >> putting in gerrit to get testing along with the review process. 
> >> The
> >> major downside to gerritt that I see is the loss of offline
> >> reviewing of patches, which is how I do basically all my patch
> >> review.
> > 
> > In Gerrit, every patch has instructions to pull and merge it into
> > your local repository. That's more of a hassle than just using your
> > e-mail client, obviously, but it can probably be scripted on the
> > client side to create one branch per patch set, so it could work in
> > the offline case.
> > What will probably not work as easily is seeing the comments added
> > by others.
> What I meant was: I can take my laptop with my normal email client and
> review patches while disconnected from the internet, and that review
> shows up once I get connected again.  With gerrit, I'd have to go
> save review comments in a file and remember to put them into a web
> form later once I get connectivity again, right?

Yes, that's true. The closest thing to offline support that Gerrit has 
is the merge patch to local repo feature.
Gerrit's code seems rather nice FWIW, but I'm not volunteering to 
implement offline support ;)