Re: Request for assistance maintaining LibreWolf

[Ian Eure <ian@retrospec.tv>]

Christopher Baines <mail@cbaines.net> writes:

> [[PGP Signed Part:Undecided]]
> 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.
>

Throughput of patch review is useless without considering the rate 
of new issues opened.  It doesn’t matter how much review 
throughput increases if the new issue rate increases faster.  What 
the graphs show is that the backlog has a trend of years-long 
growth -- that only happens when the open rate exceeds the close 
rate.  The problem will continue to grow as long as that remains 
the case.

Thanks,

  — Ian