Re: a few thoughts on the schedule

On 2015-05-18 23:34:16 -0400, Robert Haas wrote:
> On May 18, 2015, at 10:41 PM, Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> wrote:

> > [first 9.6 CF around 2015-07-15]

> Honestly, that seems awful soon. I would have thought maybe August 15th.

Maybe we should just rename it to 9.6-1 for now? And then look how
things look around pgcon?

> I am inclined to think the 5-CommitFest thing we did this time did not
> work out. It might've been fine if feature freeze had been a month
> earlier, but by freezing in May we've pretty clearly stolen at least a
> month, if not two, from the next cycle.

I personally think the late close of the 9.4 cycle has alone thrings far
enough off track that we can't fairly evaluate a 5 CF schedule.

Personally I'm coming more and more to the conclusion that CFs just
don't work [anymore]. I think the *tracking* itself is rather important
and has a worthwhile role. But it seems to me that what CFs have lately
essentially ended up being, is closer to a cycle long review queue than
anything else.

ISTM that the CF scheduling right now does more harm than good.
* They seem to frustrate a lot of the people doing a lot of
reviews.
* Evidently they don't very well prevent individual patches from
just slipping through and through.
* They lead to completely uninteresting patches being reviewed before
others.
* The contribution experience is still pretty painful and takes ages

Maybe we should forget them and just have monthly 'judgefests' where
some poor sod summarizes the current state and direction, and we then
collaboratively discuss whether we see things going anywhere and if not,
what would need to happen that they do. And have a policy that "older"
patches should be preferred over newer ones; but at the same time cull
patches continually sitting at the tail end as 'not interesting'.