Christopher Baines <m...@cbaines.net> writes:
[[PGP Signed Part:Undecided]]
Ian Eure <i...@retrospec.tv> writes:
We've had for many months a feature in QA [1] where people can
mark
patches as being reviewed and looking like they're ready to be
merged,
which is personally what I hope will mitigate this feeling of
"I
cannot
help you since I don't have commit access", because you can
help,
you
can review the patches and if you think they're ready to
merge, you
can
record that, and this does help highlight patches that are
ready to
merge.
Yes, I’ve used it before. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to
be
making a material difference, as the size of the backlog
continues to
grow[1]. Progress on this problem would result in the backlog
decreasing. It doesn’t matter how many reviewers say it looks
good --
a committer is required to actually push the changes.
I think it's unfair to say it's not making a difference, I
really rely
on it at least. I also think measuring the backlog and using
that as the
success metric is unwise, what we really want is an increase in
throughput.
Throughput of patch review is useless without considering the rate
of new issues opened. It doesn’t matter how much review
throughput increases if the new issue rate increases faster. What
the graphs show is that the backlog has a trend of years-long
growth -- that only happens when the open rate exceeds the close
rate. The problem will continue to grow as long as that remains
the case.
Thanks,
— Ian
