Re: gnu-patches back log

[Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name>]

On Wed, Mar 01, 2017 at 11:17:15AM +0000, Pjotr Prins wrote:
> I am not asking you in particular, but everyone in general, if you
> feel like coaching one submission per week. That would take a load
> of work away from Ricardo and Ludo and improve speed dramatically.

Try running `git log --format=full` to see who is actually pushing
commits. It's a significantly more diverse group than just Ricardo and
Ludo.

> This is the first thing I am trying :). The main difference with the
> existing approach is that I want to have more engagement from fresh
> contributors who can also peer review. Review is an excellent way of
> learning. How exactly we are going to do this is not clear yet. But
> that is what I am thinking. 
> 
> Meanwhile I want to know what limits people actually have. I think 2
> weeks is not acceptable (but that should be obvious).

I'm sure that everyone would like for patches to be handled within two
weeks, 3 days, etc. But, what operating system distribution actually
does that? Guix is already one of the most accessible distributions for
new contributors. Many of us are *at the limit* of what we can do for
Guix.

Describing our efforts as "embarrassing" (which you've done more than
once) is demotivating. Please try something else.

By the way, I know that at least several of us give special attention to
patches from new contributors. We are aware of the effects of speedy (or
slow) review.

Plus, I almost never hear anyone talk about all the other important
"boring" work that goes into the distribution: Package maintenance,
security updates and vulnerability review, and bug triage. These are the
other tasks we must balance against patch review. And after that, we can
actually work on features and refactoring.

And yet, I don't badger anyone to do more of that work, because I think
that would actually make them *less interested* in doing it. If they
skim the commit log and mailing lists, they'll know these tasks exist.