Re: Patch committers

Greg Smith <greg(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
> Since most people have an upper limit on how much community time they
> can spend, every minute spent reviewing is one you're not working on
> your own patches during. The way you're describing the qualification
> process, it would be easy to conclude that there's a reviewer ladder,
> and a developer ladder, and only climbing the latter leads to being a
> committer--that no matter how much review you do, it doesn't really
> count as a committer grade skill.

Well, we only instituted the commitfest system last year; before that
there wasn't any formal concept of people reviewing patches at all.
Nobody has yet been promoted to committer on the basis of their
reviewing work, but I don't wish to suggest that it couldn't happen.

> I'm not sure that's the message you want to be sending, because anyone
> who dreams of being a committer is going to stay as far away from doing
> review as they can if that notion spreads. Based on the growing
> frustration with "doing review doesn't leave me with time for my own
> patches" I keep hearing, that perception is already something to be wary
> of.

I'll let you in on a secret: it feels about like that in the committer
trenches too.

At this point it seems that one of the major practical reasons for
appointing new committers would be their willingness to help with
review/commit of incoming patches. If anyone is thinking there's
a ladder they can climb that doesn't have that responsibility at
the top, I'm afraid they're mistaken.

regards, tom lane