2008/10/29 Daniel Berlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >> >> I agree that the patch tracker probably does not get more patches >> reviewed but it definitely gets less patches lost. > > But in the end, it didn't solve the underlying problem, so it didn't > improve our rate of attrition of smaller contributors.
There are more important issues than getting your patch ignored that scare away smaller contributors. My point is that losing contributors is sad but losing patches is also sad. They are two related but different things and the patch tracker helped with the latter. > I think you misunderstood whatI meant. > Basically you would enter your email address into the page, and it > would figure out, based on it's internal list of maintenance areas and > black magic, what patches are wiating around that you cold possibly > review. > It would not require sending an email, etc. > It would effectively be "wandering through the patch tracker" except > it would limit it's display to those things you could actually help > with, instead of a list of 100 patches, most of which yo may not be > able to do anything about. Are you talking about something you are planning to implement? This seems a desirable feature of the tracker. However, having this does not invalidate the previous setup, which was useful for other cases I already mentioned. >> A bi-weekly status report of the patch tracker sent to gcc-patches >> would definitively make the list of unreviewed patches more visible. I >> believe this may also be a problem for the continuous builder: If >> there is no visible feedback from it, that is, if one needs to >> actively check its status, then it is likely to be missed/neglected. > > I did this for about 2 weeks, and was asked privately by a few to stop > because they saw it as spam. Really? That is very disturbing. I don't see how a bi-weekly ping could be more spam than the multiple individual 'pings' we currently request from contributors. Moreover, I fail to understand why, if you are a reviewer, wouldn't be interested in a list of unreviewed patches. Unless you don't want to be a reviewer, that is. > At this point, I don't know what i can do that actually helps the > problems we face as a community. I don't think that the patch tracker could solve all problems but it was a very nice and useful tool. Probably, there is not even a consensus about which are those problems. In my opinion, the talk Chris Lattner gave at Google [*] was right on many issues regarding the difficulties to contribute to GCC. Cheers, Manuel. [*] http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1921156852099786640#21m40s
