Re: next CommitFest

Robert Haas wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 10:55 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>> Simon Riggs <simon@2ndQuadrant.com> writes:
>>> All the CF manager needs to do is ensure that every patch submitted
>>> chalks up one review. If you think about it, we wouldn't actually need
>>> any rr reviewers at all then, because if we have 20 patches we would
>>> have 20 reviews due. So the whole scheme is self-balancing.
>> Well, no, that's *far* too optimistic/simplistic, because it imagines
>> that every review is worth the same.  What we lack is not just review
>> time but qualified review time, ie, comments from someone who's already
>> familiar with the portion of the code base that's being patched.
> 
> Right, but I think we're more likely to find such people among the
> pool of existing contributors than we are among people who don't write
> patches themselves but happen to volunteer to review.
> 
> I think Simon's idea of requiring 1 review per patch probably IS a bit
> overly simplistic - for one thing, someone who submits 10 patches, as
> I did in the July CommitFest, can scarcely be expected to also review
> 10 patches.  (Even if they were willing, it would make the CommitFest
> longer, not shorter.)  But I don't think they should get by reviewing
> none, either, especially if they're submitting patches to every
> CommitFest.
> 
> It's not my idea that we should punish someone like Dave Page who does
> a lot of PostgreSQL work and occasionally writes a patch.  What I'm
> complaining about is people who submit patches regularly and rarely or
> never review.  We have enough volunteers to cover new and occasional
> patch submitters; sometimes those reviews are not quite as thorough,
> but new and occasional contributors tend to submit relatively simple
> patches anyway, so it's not a catastrophe.  It's the regular patch
> submitters who, IMHO, most need to be involved.

I think we (the commitfest manager?) should simply send polite message
to any regulars who submits patches but hasn't volunteered for review.
Along the lines of:

"Hi XXX. You've submitted a patch to the commitfest. As you know, this
is a community process and the it depends on volunteers like you. It
would be extremely helpful if you could pick a patch that interests you
from the list at commitfest.postgresql.org, mark yourself as a reviewer,
and review and/or test it as thoroughly as you can. Remember that the
faster other patches are reviewed, the faster others get to review your
patch and the faster the commitfest can be closed and the version can be
released."

The commitfest manager can apply common sense: if there's plenty of
reviewers already and not many patches, there's no need to reach out to
more people. OTOH, if there's a shortage, he can e.g. go through old
commitfests too and beg people who have contributed in the past.

Think of a fundraiser who calls around people, begging for donations.
This is the same, except that we're begging for people's time instead of
money. Or think of donating blood. If there's a shortage of blood of a
certain type, they will send emails to past donors, asking to come donate.

I agree with Tom though that we don't really need a huge pool of people
who chip in with one hour per month. We need people who know the
codebase pretty well, and who can spend a fair amount of time to do
thorough review of complex patches. There is a few dozen or so people
out there who have enough knowledge on various parts of the system, or
are good at writing documentation, or good at testing. The question is
how to get them to donate more time. I'm proposing that we ask them to.
It can't hurt.

--  Heikki Linnakangas EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com