Ian Eure <ian@retrospec.tv> writes:

>> We've had for many months a feature in QA [1] where people can mark
>> patches as being reviewed and looking like they're ready to be
>> merged,
>> which is personally what I hope will mitigate this feeling of "I
>> cannot
>> help you since I don't have commit access", because you can help,
>> you
>> can review the patches and if you think they're ready to merge, you
>> can
>> record that, and this does help highlight patches that are ready to
>> merge.
>>
>
> Yes, I’ve used it before.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be
> making a material difference, as the size of the backlog continues to
> grow[1].  Progress on this problem would result in the backlog
> decreasing.  It doesn’t matter how many reviewers say it looks good --
> a committer is required to actually push the changes.

I think it's unfair to say it's not making a difference, I really rely
on it at least. I also think measuring the backlog and using that as the
success metric is unwise, what we really want is an increase in
throughput.

I think it does matter if people take the time to review patches, as
that is what takes the time and provides the value.