Thanks for leading this discussion, Stephan. I don’t disagree with anything that has been said but am slightly concerned that the improvements in documenting pull requests won’t translate into the git commit messages. Acceptance of a higher standard will be swift as long as reviewers set the example and expectation. Perhaps a new template could be trialled as opt-in for a few weeks by several or more committers.
Greg > On Jul 18, 2017, at 10:58 AM, Stephan Ewen <se...@apache.org> wrote: > > My thinking was exactly as echoed by Gordon and Ufuk: > > - The yes/no sections are also for reviewers a reminder of what to watch > out for. > Let's face it, probably half of the committers are not aware that these > things need to be checked implicitly against every change. > A good part of the recent issues came from exactly that. Changes get > merged (because the pull request lingered or the number of open PRs is > high) and these implications are not thought through. > > - This is to me a tradeoff between requiring explicit +1s from certain > people (maintainers) for certain components, and getting an awareness into > everybody's mind. > > - It also makes all users aware that these things are considered and > implicitly manages expectations in how fast can things get merged. > > > Concerning the long text: I think it is fine to play the ball a bit more to > the contributors. > Making it easy, yes. But also making it correct and well. We need to make > contributors aware of what it means to contribute to a system to runs > highly available critical infrastructure. There is quite often still the > mindset of "hey, cool, open source, let me throw something out there". > > My take is that anyone who is serious about contributing and serious about > quality is not put off by this template. > > Concerning the introductory text: I bet that rarely anyone reads the "how > to contribute" guide. Before the template, virtually no new pull request > had even the required naming. > That text needs to be in the template, or we might as well not have it > anywhere at all. > > > > Just for reference: Below is the introductory text of the JDK ;-) > > 5. Know what to expect > > Only the best patches submitted will actually make it all the way into a > JDK code base. The goal is not to take in the maximum number of > contributions possible, but rather to accept only the highest-quality > contributions. The JDK is used daily by millions of people and thousands of > businesses, often in mission-critical applications, and so we can't afford > to accept anything less than the very best. > > If you're relatively new to the Java platform then we recommend that you > gain more experience writing Java applications before you attempt to work > on the JDK itself. The purpose of the sponsored-contribution process is to > bring developers who already have the skills required to work on the JDK > into the existing development community. The members of that community have > neither the time nor the patience required to teach basic Java programming > skills or platform implementation techniques. > > > > > > On Tue, Jul 18, 2017 at 12:15 PM, Ufuk Celebi <u...@apache.org> wrote: > >> On Tue, Jul 18, 2017 at 10:47 AM, Fabian Hueske <fhue...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> For example even if the question about changed dependencies is answered >>> with "no", the reviewer still has to check that. >> >> But having it as a required option/text in the PR descriptions helps >> reviewers to actually remember to check that. I think we should be >> more realistic here and assume that reviewers will also overlook >> things etc. >> >> To me, keeping the questions is more important than the intro text. >> Therefore, I would be OK with moving the text to the contrib guide, >> but I would definitely keep the detailed yes/nos and not go with high >> level questions that everyone will answer differently. >> >> – Ufuk >>