On Thu, Aug 4, 2016 at 11:12 PM, Manuel López-Ibáñez <lopeziba...@gmail.com> wrote: > At least half of the global reviewers in MAINTAINERS never review any > patches. Most of them are not active any more and presumably do not read GCC > emails. > > I'm not sure how to address this problem, but there is definitely a problem. > Some ideas: > > a) Follow LLVM's model and allow changes to be reviewed after commit. > > Advantages: Faster turnaround, less frustration. No more effort than now, > possibly less by not requiring pinging. etc. > > Disadvantages: code may go unreviewed; churn in the tree because of > iterative changes or reverts. > > b) Anyone with svn-write powers can approve patches. > > Advantages: More reviewers, faster turn around, less frustration. Distribute > the work. > Disadvantages: Poor patches may get accepted interfering with the work from > the most-active contributors. There is no real incentive to review patches, > thus the actual situation may not change significantly. > > c) Everybody have to get their patches reviewed, promote a "Review-by" > economy. > > Advantages: Actively encourage people to review each other patches. > Distribute effort. Ideally, faster turn-around and less frustration. > > Disadvantages: It may slow down people that were able to self-approve. > Additional work for people that contribute a lot in finding reviews. People > that contribute little have little motivation to review. > > d) Delegate hierarchically. Module owners should seek and delegate to people > with svn-write powers and ask for reviews in exchange of reviews. > > Advantages: No loss in quality, distribute work, creates an economy of > reviews. > > Disadvantages: More work required from module owners to keep track of > patches, reviews and possible reviewers. Possibly offset by not having to do > in-depth reviews themselves.
For the fortran frontend and runtime library, we have a sort-of hybrid between your options a, b, and c. Namely, - most of the people who are (or at some point, were) actively working on the frontend/library have reviewer status (or whatever the title is in MAINTAINERS). I.e. like your option b) and c). - The actual maintainers are not really involved in any day-to-day work anymore (not to disparage their past contributions, which we're of course grateful for). Just to point out that we're not dependent on maintainers with super-powers. - a "2-week rule"; if a patch by a reviewer goes unreviewed for 2 weeks, the reviewer can commit it without review. A bit like your option a). The 2-week rule, in particular, came about due to frustration with lack of reviews. -- Janne Blomqvist
