[coreboot] [RFC] Time until patches should be submitted (was: Document for review: coreboot Gerrit Etiquette and Guidelines)

[Martin Roth]

As others have stated, my concern is the tradeoff between long and
short times.  Too short a time, and people don't getting the chance to
review patches.  Too long a time and it delays development, frustrates
developers, and requires rebasing the patch, maybe requiring MORE
review.

Alternate thoughts or proposals:
- "Note that some contributors prefer to work on coreboot during
business hours, so consider leaving patches up longer than 24 hours
during weekends and holidays"
This of course presents other issues of dealing with holidays in
various countries, time zones, etc.

- Trivial patches (Whitespace, spelling, and the like) can be
submitted with no delay. Non-trivial commits touching fewer than 20
lines of code should be submitted no sooner than 24 hours after the
last major change.  Changes larger than that 20 lines should wait at
least 48? 72? hours after the last major change.

Paul also mentioned that a method of getting non-trivial patches in
quickly should be addressed as well.  This should not be a regular
occurrence, but sometimes we need or desire to push a patch quickly.
He suggested 2 +2s and a statement to the mailing list. To me, this
defeats the purpose of quick.

Yesterday tpearson requested on IRC that we get a patch in quickly.
It was, in my opinion significant, although just a single line change,
which made it easy to understand and review.  We got 3 +2s on it in
just a few minutes.  I thought that was a good barrier and would like
to propose that as the rule:  If you can get 3 +2s, knowing that it's
going to be submitted immediately, it can be submitted.  If this gets
abused, it can be reviewed and changed at some point in the future.

Martin

On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 2:48 PM, David Hendricks <dhendrix at google.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 1:36 PM, Paul Menzel
> <paulepanter at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>>
>> Dear coreboot folks,
>>
>>
>> Am Donnerstag, den 29.10.2015, 12:55 -0600 schrieb Martin Roth:
>> > As the community has grown, so has the need to formalize some of the
>> > guidelines that the community lives by. When the community was small,
>> > it was easy to communicate these things just from one person to
>> > another.
>>
>> first of, big thanks go to Martin for writing up the draft!
>>
>> […]
>>
>> > Expectations contributors should have:
>> > --------------------------------------
>> > * Don't expect that people will review your patch unless you ask them
>> > to. Adding other people as reviewers is the easiest way. Asking for
>> > reviews for individual patches in the IRC channel, or by sending a
>> > direct request to an individual through your favorite messenger is
>> > usually the best way to get a patch reviewed quickly.
>> > * Don't expect that your patch will be submitted immediately after
>> > getting a +2. As stated previously, non-trivial patches should wait
>> > at least 24 hours before being submitted.
>>
>> to get some context, at the coreboot conference in Bonn some people
>> asked for longer review time to not wake up the next morning seeing
>> something changed.
>>
>> Even then, especially for non-payed developers, I think it’s hard to
>> stay up to date, so the question is, if the time is long enough. On IRC
>> somebody even mentioned, that patches should stay up for review for *a
>> week* before getting merged, so there is enough time people can notice
>> this.
>>
>> To not complicate rules, it probably would be easiest to just ask
>> around if people are alright with 24 hours. Especially, when people
>> working on the code get added as reviewers, this should be alright.
>>
>> On the other hand, more complicated rules could be drafted. The
>> following rules just deal with the time issue. I am assuming, that +2
>> has been given before and the appropriate announcements are made.
>>
>> 1. Commits just touching a board can be submitted after 24 hours.
>> 2. Commits touch more boards, should stay up for review for a week.
>> They can be submitted earlier if an announcement to the list about the
>> urgency has been sent and at least two people have given +2.
>
>
> There's a catch-22 here: The kinds of patches that could benefit from >24
> hours in limbo also tend to be the disruptive kinds that may require
> additional rebasing or changes should they remain in code review for too
> long. A lot can happen in a week and disruptive patches bitrot faster than
> normal ones.
>
> 24 hours should be considered a minimum, but I'd say "preferably a few days
> if possible." A >24hr grace period can be agreed upon by reviewers and the
> author depending on the complexity to mitigate bitrot.
>
> --
> David Hendricks (dhendrix)
> Systems Software Engineer, Google Inc.
>
> --
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