Re: CommitFest status/management

On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 8:27 AM, Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> wrote:
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
>>>
>>> It would also like to clarify the use case for this a little bit more.
>>>  Is this just to track patches which committers are in the process of
>>> committing (or have committed)?  Or would a committer potentially set
>>> this on some patch that was still being reviewed, and if so would that
>>> mean "don't review this any more because I'm taking over" or "I'm
>>> planning to pick this up when the review process completes" or
>>> something else?
>>
>> I am thinking we can just add a new status, "claimed by committer" and
>> not bother about adding a new column with the committer name.
>
> I think it would be more flexible and useful to be able to "claim" it before
> the review is finished. It would mean in effect "I am following this and
> intend to commit it when it's ready".

If we went with Bruce's interpretation, we could have a "committer"
field that only appears when the status is "Claimed by Committer" or
"Committed" and the contents of that field could be displayed in
parentheses in the status column, like this: Claimed by Committer (Tom
Lane).

If we went with Andrew's interpretation, we would need a completely
separate column, because there wouldn't be any logical relationship
between the status field and the committer field.

Any other votes? Tom?

On a possibly related note, I am not totally sure that we want to
enshrine the principle that committers categorically won't touch
patches that are not yet marked Ready for Committer. For major
patches like SE-PostgreSQL or the partitioning stuff, early committer
involvement is an extremely important ingredient for success. And, I
have an uncomfortable feeling about having Tom, Bruce, and Andrew all
intentionally sitting on the bench waiting for reviews to complete
while the days tick away. On the other hand, I also agree with Tom's
point that, if completing reviews doesn't affect whether the patch
gets in, there's less incentive for people to review.

...Robert