Re: Guix Days: Patch flow discussion

[Simon Tournier <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com>]

Hi Steve,

  ( On a side note, the triage of old bugs is a similar problem.  They
    are easy to find [2], read, check and send an email to
    12345@debbugs.gnu.org does not appear to me an issue with any tool.
    
    For what it is worth and without any willing of being harsh, I am
    able to count the people doing this boring task.

    What is hard to solve is the incentives for doing the boring, but
    necessary, collective tasks.

    Bah the usual problem of lengthy discussions with roommates in any
    shared apartment: who clean the bathroom? :-) )


On lun., 05 févr. 2024 at 09:39, Steve George <steve@futurile.net> wrote:

> Our goal for the discussion:
>
> 	How do we double the number of patches that are *reviewed* and
> 	*applied* to Guix in the next six months?

Thanks for these notes and leading the session.  On my side, it was a
fruitful discussion.

Well, let me try to quickly summarize my conclusion of the session:

 1. We have a social/organisational problem.

 2. We have some tooling annoyances.



The easy first: #2 about tools.  The email workflow is often cited as
part of the issue.  That’s a false-problem, IMHO.

Projects that use PR/MR workflow have the same problem.  For instance,
Julia [1] has 896 open PR.  On my browser, it means 36 pages so if I go
to – 25 PRs per page – the still open submitted PRs:

   + the 6th page:  around Sept.2023 and Oct. 2023
   + the 12th page: around Apr. 2023 and Mar. 2023
   + the 18th page: around Jul. 2022 and Mar. 2022
   + the 24th page: around Jun. 2021 and May  2021
   + the 30th page: around Mar. 2020 and Oct. 2019
   + the 36th page: around Mar. 2017 and May. 2014

Obviously, an example is not a proof or an evidence.  It is just a
first clue. :-)

I will not speak about the channel ’nonguix’ but it gives another
clue.

That said, for sure, the tools need more love.  Thanks all the people
for all hard work over the years in this area – no name, you know, I
fear to forget someone. ;-)

So, yeah we need to smooth the technical burden for reviewing in order
to focus on the review itself.

To be clear, the email workflow might add burden on submitter side but I
am doubtful it is really part of the bottleneck for reviewing and
pushing submissions.


Although the tools might add some unnecessary friction, the net of the
issue is IMHO #1: reviewing is just boring and time-consuming.

Who feel accountable?  And for what?  That’s the question, IMHO.

If the number of submission is doubled, how do we increase the number of
people that feel enough accountable for doing the boring work?

  ( Maybe accountable is not the correct word.  Obligation neither.
    Well the kind of feeling that is okish if you skip the task but you
    know it will be better if you do it. )


Well, the difficult part is not pressing some buttons for merging and
pushing – whatever the tools or workflow.  The difficult part is to
scrutinize the submission.

I think the bottleneck is not the number of people able to push.
Instead, I think the bottleneck is the number of people confident with
the change for then pushing it.

The question is thus: how to build this confidence?


Look, when a committer has some free-time, most of the time, what is the
process: take first the “easy“ submissions for committing them – from
trivial updates to simple updates.  If free-time remains, then engage
with more “complex” submissions… ah no more free-time. :-)

Why starting by the “easy” submission?  Because it is less boring and
time-consuming; somehow it is easier to feel confident with that sort of
change for pushing it.

As a rule of thumb, about the time it takes – on average –, the order of
magnitude for reviewing is similar as the one for submitting.  Well,
from my experience and although I never did stats. :-)


All in all, I see two paths to move forward:

i) Non-committers can help.  On two fronts:

   + Answer to submitter with the changes for being compliant with Guix
     standards.
   
   + Follow-up on patches already commented but without an updated
     revision: upgrade the re-roll count by sending this revision.

     It eases for merging if I do not have to make many tiny edits
     myself.

ii) Create more teams or at least more people should commit to be part
    of a team and help in reviewing what they know.

    For instance, since Sept. (167 days ago) I have been CC in 108
    patches submissions.  Most of them are from ’core’ team that I would
    qualify as “complex”. :-)

    Many patches assigned to ’core’ team are sent by committers.  The
    issue is not being a committer or not.  Instead, being more eyes
    commenting would increase the confidence.  Thus it would reduce the
    workload.

    That’s the same for any team, IMHO.
    
    And I do not speak about patches that are not assigned to any team.


Somehow, we need to think how people would feel “accountable” for doing
the collective tasks with low, no direct or personal reward.

As with many non-technical topics, it is not easy.  Because it is a
collective journey not clearly identified – and not a kind of
reproducible bug to fix, even the tougher.

Last, the manual says:

    « As a rule of thumb, a contributor should have accumulated
      fifty (50) reviewed commits to be considered as a committer
      and have sustained their activity in the project for at least
      6 months. »

So if people are willing to take more responsibility to help the
project…


Well, while writing that I could have give a look to patches… ;-)

Cheers,
simon


1: https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia
2: https://issues.guix.gnu.org/forgotten