Hi Reuven I agree with all your points except maybe in term of bar level, especially on new features (like extensions or IOs). If the PRs on the core should be heavily reviewed, I'm more in favor of merging the PR pretty fast even if not perfect. It's not a technical topic, it's really a contribution and community topic.
Thanks anyway, the dashboard is a good idea ! Regards JB Le 19 févr. 2018 à 19:33, à 19:33, Reuven Lax <re...@google.com> a écrit: >There have been a number of threads on code reviews (most recently on a >"State of the project" email). These threads have died out without much >resolution, but I'm not sure that the concerns have gone away. > >First of all, I'm of the opinion that a code-review bar for Beam >commits is >critical to success of the project. This is a system with many subtle >semantics, which might not be obvious at first glance. Beam pipelines >process user data, and the consequence of certain bugs might mean >corrupting user data and aggregations - something to avoid at all cost >if >we want Beam to be trusted. Finally Beam pipelines often run at >extremely >high scale; while many of our committers have a strong intuition for >what >can go wrong when running at high scale, not everybody who wants to >contribute will have this experience. > > >However, we also cannot afford to let our policy get in the way of >building >a community. We *must* remain a friendly place to develop and >contribute. > > >When I look at concerns people have had on on code reviews (and I've >been >browsing most PRs this past year), I see a few common threads: > > >*Review Latency* > >Latency on code reviews can be too high. At various times folks (most >recently, Ahmet and I) have tried to regularly look for stale PRs and >ping >them, but latency still remains high. > > >*Pedantic* > >Overly-pedantic comments (change variable names, etc.) can be >frustrating. >The PR author can feel like they are being forced to make meaningless >changes just so the reviewer will allow merging. Note that this is >sometimes in the eye of the beholder - the reviewer may not think all >these >comments are pedantic. > > >*Don't Do This* > >Sometimes a reviewer rejects an entire PR, saying that this should not >be >done. There are various reasons given: this won't scale, this will >break >backwards compatibility, this will break a specific runner, etc. The PR >author may not always understand or agree with these reasons, and this >can >leave hurt feelings. > > >I would like open discussion about ways of making our code-review >policy >more welcoming. I'll seed the discussion with a few ideas: > > >*Code Review Dashboard and Automation* > >We should invest in adding a code-review dashboard to our site, >tracking >stale PRs by reviewer. Quick turnaround on code reviews is essential >building community, so all Beam committers should consider reviewing >code >as important as their own coding. Spark has built a PR dashboard ( >https://spark-prs.appspot.com/) which they’ve found better than >Github’s >dashboard; we could easily fork this dashboard. There are also tools >that >will automatically ping reviewers (mention-bot and hey there are two >such >tools). We can also make sure that new PRs are auto assigned a reviewer >(e.g. https://github.com/imsky/pull-review) > > >*Code Review Response SLA* > >It would be great if we could agree on a response-time SLA for Beam >code >reviews. The response might be “I am unable to do the review until next >week,” however even that is better than getting no response. > > >*Guideline Document* > >I think we should have a guideline document, explaining common reasons >a >reviewer might reject an approach in a PR. e.g. "This will cause >scaling >problems," "This will cause problems for XXX runner," "This is >backwards >incompatible." Reviewers can point to this doc as part of their >comments, >along with extra flavor. e.g. “as per the guideline doc, this will >cause >scaling problems, and here’s why.” > > >*Guidelines on Comments* > >Not everyone agrees on which comments are pedantic, which makes it hard >to >have specific guidelines here. One general guideline me might adopt: if >it'll take less time for the reviewer to make the changes themselves, >it's >not an appropriate comment. The reviewer should fix those issues a >follow-on PR. This adds a bit more burden on reviewers, but IMO is >worth it >to keep Beam a friendly environment. This is especially important for >first-time contributors, who might otherwise lost interest. If the >author >is a seasoned Beam contributor, we can expect more out of them. > > >We should also make sure that these fixups serve as educational moments >for >the new contributor. “Thanks for the contribution! I’ll be making some >changes during the merge so that the code stays consistent across the >codebase - keep an eye on them.” > > >Would love to hear more thoughts. > > >Reuven
