Re: GNOME 40 work should be done on Savannah (was: Re: GNOME 40)

[zimoun <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com>]

Hi,

> The thing is, the work of non-committers *must* be reviewed at some
> point, anyway.  Moreover, a committer must take responsibility by
> digitally signing it.  To eliminate either of these steps would put us
> at risk.
>
> There's no guarantee that the work of Guix committers will be reviewed
> by anyone else, because no one else's reputation is on the line.  Some
> of us try to keep an eye on things, but I would not bet on that
> oversight being comprehensive.  I'm certainly not doing it
> comprehensively.

Reviewing does not require commit access.  Examples [1,2] among many
others.  The recent (trivial) addition of Julia packages [3] is
interesting in this regard, IMHO.  It is a chain of trust.  Committer
has the final word.

And to my taste, there is too much non-trivial patches pushed without
going through guix-patches first.  Another story.

1: <http://issues.guix.gnu.org/44032>
2: <http://issues.guix.gnu.org/46806>
3: <http://issues.guix.gnu.org/47350>

>> The people that work on it now are Raghav and me, and Raghav does not
>> have commit access yet, so that's the only way we can work and
>> cooperate now. We don't have a choice.
>
> Sorry, but that's simply false.  You _do_ have a choice.  You can do
> what we've been doing in the Guix community for years: as a committer,
> _you_ can commit the work of non-committers on their behalf.  If not
> you, then any of the other ~64 Guix committers can do so.

[...]

>> I don't feel like people should be barred to contribute to that GNOME
>> 40 upgrade because they arent an approved committer. That doesnt feel
>> inclusive to me.
>
> No one is "barred" from contributing.  Raghav and many others without
> commit access have been successfully contributing to Guix for years.
>
> I understand that it's inconvenient.  Naturally, you would like to
> eliminate that inconvenience.

I miss something.  Is the Git ’remote’ not fitting the need?

Well, for instance, I have currently 4 remotes, some where I fetch, some
where I push.

For example, to avoid to overflow guix-patch when updating Bioconductor
R packages, Ricardo (committer) pushed the work on the Savannah branch
’wip-r’, i.e, I fetched from Savannah, tweaked, pushed to my personal
repo, Ricardo fetched from it, etc. with a simple synchronisation on
#guix or #guix-hpc.

Another example is the recent Outreachy.  Magali (intern) pushed their
work on their own repo, I (non-committer) fetched from it, commented,
etc.  Then once ready, I do not remember who (committer) pushed to the
Savannah branch ’wip-guix-log’ (help with review welcome ;-)).

Another example is the recent Cuirass / new offloading thing.  Mathieu
did some work on a branch in their personal repo, asked me to give a
look, so I fetched, commented, etc. then they pushed to ’master’
Savannah a part of it, still improving other part on their personal
branch, etc.

Well, I should miss something.  In my understanding, Git is designed to
allow collaboration without a central repo.  Is it not what
“distributed” means in DVCS?

If having a central repo—–where a large number of people can write
in––eases the work, why not.  But the key point is to regularly push to
a ’wip-gnome’ branch or ’core-updates’ on Savannah.  Savannah must be
the reference.  For 2 practical reasons: 1) it is more discoverable,
i.e., inclusive, for newcomers (clone the Guix repo Savannah, press ’y’
with Magit, see ’wip-gnome’, contribute!) and 2) it increases the chance
that other Guixers give a look time to time.

Last, I agree with Mark, regularly pushing to Savannah is the guarantee
that the final work is fully respecting the Guix standards.  By doing
so, it is the responsibility of the committer by signing off to ensure
that the standards are respected.

Somehow, it is the plan, right?  And a “miscommunication” about the word
«flexible» and about how to exchange large numbers of patches without
’format-patch+send-email’?

Cheers,
simon