Re: Patch committers

"Kevin Grittner" <Kevin(dot)Grittner(at)wicourts(dot)gov> writes:
> On the subject topic, I have to say that I don't see where Robert
> hasn't met the qualifications mentioned so far on this thread as
> required to promote someone to the committer level; are there some
> requirements which exist but haven't been mentioned?

He hasn't actually written all that much *code* ... yet, anyway.

Historically, we've promoted people to being committers when
(a) the existing committers got tired of applying patches from them
and (b) their patches were usually going in without significant
modification. (a) speaks to whether you do enough work regularly enough
that there's actually a benefit to the project from giving you the keys
to the car, and (b) speaks to whether you're ready in terms of technical
knowledge of the code base. (I'm not saying you have to be competent
in the whole PG code base, just whatever part you like to work on.)

Now those criteria were developed to deal mainly with people committing
their own patches. What we have at the moment is a lot of patches
coming in from people who aren't ready to be committers, and maybe don't
ever want to be. The question is how to do an adequate job of reviewing
their patches, when only a fraction of the existing committers are
willing to put time into reviewing other people's patches. (Let's face
it, that's a lot less fun than writing your own code.) While I'm not
against promoting more committers to deal with the influx of patches,
the only way I know for people to get to the skill level of being fully
competent reviewers is to have done a lot of patch writing themselves.

Years ago, somebody (I think one of the original Berkeley crew) remarked
"this project doesn't need a lot of people with a little time, it needs
a few people with a lot of time". I'm afraid that's still true, and
it's still hard to find those people.

regards, tom lane