[coreboot] [RFC] Time until patches should be submitted

[Timothy Pearson]

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On 11/04/2015 10:07 AM, Martin Roth wrote:
> 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

Yes, this is a good compromise.  There isn't very much we can do about
latency on non-emergency patches; however due to the increased delays
per-patch, patch trains will become the dominant method of submitting
large changes (I am expecting a variant of Little's Law to hold here).
As a result, the improved patch train handling set out in the CL becomes
critical.  I assume all reviewers are on board with the idea of not
rebasing unless something is broken, and handling formatting or other
non-functional changes at the end of a series?

Thanks!

- -- 
Timothy Pearson
Raptor Engineering
+1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line)
+1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard)
http://www.raptorengineeringinc.com
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