Re: Documenting commitfest Rules

On 2018-03-02 18:08:00 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> writes:
> > - that there's a single point documenting the state of the patch, to
> > avoid situations where different people interpret a thread differently
> > without noticing.
>
> I think that third point is at best an idealized statement, and it's not
> very reflective of actual practice. We're not great about updating the CF
> entry's state, and even if we were, I don't think there's a bright line
> between Needs Review and Waiting On Author. There may have been enough
> feedback provided so that the author has something to do, yet not so much
> that there's no point in further review.

Yea, I think it's a bit of hit/miss. But I do think that *if it happens*
the discussion around that often provides some clarification.

> But anyway you said you wanted to summarize current actual practice,
> and this isn't quite what really happens IME.

I think it's OK to state some of the aspirational goals, even if they
only halfway work. And I think we should evolve the practices after
agreeing on what they currently are ;)

> There are a couple of meta-goals as well, although I'm not sure whether
> they belong in this document:
>
> * Encourage people to review other people's patches. This isn't just
> to make the patches better, it's to make the reviewers better: they
> gain familiarity with the PG code base.

> * Ensure that committers don't have to *always* feel guilty about
> not working on other people's patches instead of their own. Otherwise
> we'd just stay in CF mode all the time.

Oh, yes, I think both of these belong.

> > Submitting a patch as a commitfest entry to a specific commitfest
> > implies a statement by the author that the patch needs input from
> > others. That input can be agreement on design decisions, high level code
> > review, testing, etc.
>
> ... or even just that the author would like somebody to commit it.

Oh, right ;)

> Also, there's at least one rule you forgot to cover, concerning
> asking people to review patches more or less proportionally to the
> amount of patches they've submitted. This is surely a lot squishier
> than the other rules, but without it, nothing much happens.

Agreed.

I think we actually should be much more aggressive about it too.

Greetings,

Andres Freund