Patches, Developers and Training

Patches, Developers and Training

[Martin Owens]

Dear NotMuch Developers,

As I understand it, notmuch is currently experiencing a backlog in the
patch review process which is quite extensive.

I'm not sure what the exact process is, but I imagine you're using some
kind of tool similar to launchpad's merge request functionality that
allows you to see branches for merging (or in this case patches).

If the system tools are good, then does the project need more training
from veterans to bring some new blood into the patch review/merge
process? What is the exact bottleneck for us to have a healthy, prompt
and robust patching process?

If the query/help is out of place, my apologies.

Best Regards, Martin Owens

Re: Patches, Developers and Training

[David Bremner]

On Tue, 13 Sep 2011 22:46:55 -0400, Martin Owens <doctormo@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm not sure what the exact process is, but I imagine you're using some
> kind of tool similar to launchpad's merge request functionality that
> allows you to see branches for merging (or in this case patches).
> 

We're not really using any system, which is part of the problem, but to
be honest probably only a small part of the problem. The real underlying
problem is that Carl has able to devote notmuch time to notmuch lately,
and we have not adapted to that.

The good news is that some technical solution might help a little.  If
you were keen to work on a bug tracking system, that would be great in
my view.  Currently I think most of the patch tracking state is
contained in tags in Carl's mailbox.  If you start at
id:"87boya98sf.fsf@gogo.home" you can find some discussion about tag
sharing. I personally think this is the way forward, although I'm
agnostic about the implementation details.  It occured to me that a
simpler (?) system might to use git to merge a shared set of tags. Then
issues of access control, merging, and reverting could be done with git.
At least for me, that is quite comfortable.

As for why not existing bug tracking system $X, I think from past
discussions, we have agreed that having something that integrates well
with notmuch is pretty much a requirement, at least for Carl. There is a
patchwork instance limping along, but it seems to me to be roughly
equivalent to "notmuch search subject:patch and notmuch"; i.e. we have
that information already.

David

Re: Patches, Developers and Training

[tycho garen]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 07:34:12AM -0300, David Bremner wrote:
> We're not really using any system, which is part of the problem, but to
> be honest probably only a small part of the problem. The real underlying
> problem is that Carl has able to devote notmuch time to notmuch lately,
> and we have not adapted to that.

I was under the impression that the Patchwork instance at the very least
indexed the conversation on the list and the patches. That's at: 

http://patchwork.notmuchmail.org/project/notmuch/list/

I'm a n00b, so feel free to disregard, but it seems that it'd be
possible to begin the work of integrating those patches into a branch,
or set of branches, for easier eventual merging into the mainline.

We/you all should probably attempt to approach some (limited) consensus
on if/how that should proceed to avoid wasting effort...

Am I missing something? 

-- 
tycho(ish) @
garen@tychoish.com
http://tychoish.com/
"don't get it right, get it written" -- james thurber