Re: Patch queue concern

From: Gregory Stark <stark(at)enterprisedb(dot)com>
To: "Bruce Momjian" <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us>
Cc: "PostgreSQL-development" <pgsql-hackers(at)postgreSQL(dot)org>
Subject: Re: Patch queue concern
Date: 2007-03-28 10:53:10
Message-ID: 87bqidmyg9.fsf@oxford.xeocode.com
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"Bruce Momjian" <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> writes:

> Right now, all the patches I think are ready for review are in the patch
> queue:
>
> http://momjian.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/pgpatches
>
> However, with feature freeze coming on Sunday, I am worried because
> there are a significant number of patches that have are not ready for
> review because they have not been completed by their authors.

That seems like a bit of a whacky criterion to use before reviewing a patch.
It favours people who are short-sighted and don't see what possible
improvements their code has. No code in an ongoing project like this is ever
"completed" anyways.

It's also an artifact of the working model we have where patches are sent in
big chunks and reviewed much later during a feature freeze. If we were
committing directly into a CVS repository we would have wanted to commit these
changes as soon as they were ready for committing, not wait until they're
"completed". Then continue working and commit further changes. It's only
because there's a two step process and the reviews are mainly happening during
the feature freeze that there's any sense that some of them are "completed".
In fact they're not of course, there will be further changes in the same area
once the freeze is lifted.

I think you should be asking people whether they think the code is in a state
where it can be committed, not whether they've finished working on it. Just
because they see further work that can be done is no reason not to commit
useful patches that are functional as they are.

In fact Postgres historically has had an even looser standard. If the code is
ready to be committed modulo bugs then it's been included in the feature
freeze in the past.

--
Gregory Stark
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com

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