Code reviews (was: Is it time to drop ChangeLogs?)

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> Introduce code reviews.  Don't give commit access to the "golden"
> branches to everyone, just to a few top contributors and reviewers.

We already have a fair bit of patches submitted and lingering in limbo
forever until someone (almost always the same someone, BTW) finally
loses hope that some of the other contributors take care of it.

If we could switch to a system where every patch is reviewed before
commit, that'd be great.  My own impression is that it will kill the
development pace because too few people are willing to spend the
corresponding efforts.

That's why I've followed a practice of giving out write access very
liberally, with "post-commit spot-check reviews" instead.  Indeed, it
means that errors in commit messages can't be fixed (we can fix them in
the ChangeLog files, admittedly, but since I don't use them it doesn't
help me).

Maybe we could have a half-way system, where commits are pushed to
a branch that is "not fast-forward-only", and this branch is then
auto-merged to the real (fast-forward-only) master branch after a delay
(one day, maybe?) to give time to fix mess ups before they're cast
in stone.


        Stefan