Inspired by the stunning success of our Release Manager experiment (or
is that "stunned by the inspiring success"?), I thought we might try
another...
Subversion's patch management has been pretty informal up till now.
Usually when a patch is posted, some interested party takes the
initiative to review and maybe commit it.
This is still happening, of course, but a few patches always drop
through the cracks. It's a problem not only because the patches are
often improvements to Subversion, but also because unresponsiveness
can discourage contributors from making more such efforts. In the
long run, we probably lose potential committers by not keeping track
of patches more carefully (since commit access is based on reviewing
several patches from the same person).
I've made a point of saving every patch that gets posted, along with
its thread, and periodically I dive into that mailbox and do a sweep,
figuring out
- which ones have already been applied
- which ones were eventually decided to be unnecessary
- which ones never got any response
- which ones got +1'd but never applied
- which ones got reviewed but not reposted
- and so on.
After removing the already-applied / won't-be-applied patches from the
list, I try to apply all the remaining ones that seem obviously good.
For those that are too complex to review right away, I file "PATCH"
issues, pointing to the original mailing list thread and/or attaching
the latest version of the patch to the issue.
Well, as you may have noticed, I haven't done a sweep for a while :-).
That mailbox is getting pretty big...
Would anyone like to wear the Patch Manager hat?
You don't need commit access for this. The task is really about
watching the dev list for mails with "[PATCH]" in the Subject header.
When you see one, flag it and keep an eye on that thread. If no
resolution happens within a few days, then post asking what's up. If
no one can take it right then, then file it as a PATCH issue (we'll
figure out the milestone based on the patch). Even that much would
smooth away a lot of the administrative burden, and give developers an
easy overview of exactly what's out there.
If someone would like to try this, I'll forward my current mailbox of
patches (don't worry, it's *just* the patch threads, nothing else).
Obviously, it's okay to try it and then quit if it proves to be too
much. But I think it's not actually a huge burden -- more of a light
but constant background job. Offhand, I'd say success is most likely
with someone who has a threaded mail reader and is comfortable with
it, but hey, whatever tools work, it doesn't matter.
Any takers?
Thanks,
-Karl
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Received on Tue Mar 4 04:43:24 2003