Re: Patch queue concern

Tom Lane wrote:
> "Simon Riggs" <simon@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
> > My feeling is we should have more regular sync points where the patch
> > queue is emptied and everything committed or rejected.
> 
> No doubt, but the real problem here is that reviewing/committing other
> people's patches is not fun, it's just work :-(.  So it's no surprise
> that it tends to get put off.  Not sure what to do about that.

Of course, writing patches isn't totally _fun_ either.

The big problem is shown in this chart:
                          P a t c h   C o m p l e x i t y       Developer       |     Simple          Complex
----------------------------------------------      Experienced     |     Easy             Medium       Novice
|    Medium           Hard
 

The basic problem is we have a lot of complex patches coming in, and
many from people who do not have years of experience with submitting
patches to PostgreSQL.  A complex patch from a novice user takes a lot
of time to review, and frankly, we don't have enough experienced
developers doing such reviews.  If the patch deals with an area of the
code where I am not experienced, often even I am incapable of reviewing
the patch.

The bottom line is that we are getting more novice developers faster
than we grow experienced developers.  This is no big surprise, and I
don't see a simple solution.  Odds are this is going to continue.

--  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB
http://www.enterprisedb.com
 + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +