Re: [dpdk-dev] [dpdk-techboard] Consider improving the DPDK contribution processes

["Burakov, Anatoly" <anatoly.burakov@intel.com>]

On 25-May-20 4:52 PM, Maxime Coquelin wrote:
> 
> 
> On 5/25/20 5:35 PM, Jerin Jacob wrote:
>> On Mon, May 25, 2020 at 8:52 PM Thomas Monjalon <thomas@monjalon.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> 25/05/2020 16:28, Burakov, Anatoly:
>>>> On 25-May-20 1:53 PM, Thomas Monjalon wrote:
>>>>> 25/05/2020 13:58, Jerin Jacob:
>>>>>> 25/05/2020 11:34, Morten Brørup:
>>>>>>> sending patches over an
>>>>>>> email as opposed to a well-integrated web interface workflow is so alien
>>>>>>> to most people that it definitely does discourage new contributions.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I understand the advantages of mailing lists (vendor independence,
>>>>>>> universal compatibility, etc.), but after doing reviews in Github/Gitlab
>>>>>>> for a while (we use those internally), going through DPDK mailing list
>>>>>>> and reviewing code over email fills me with existential dread, as the
>>>>>>> process feels so manual and 19th century to me.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Agree. I had a difference in opinion when I was not using those tools.
>>>>>> My perspective changed after using Github and Gerrit etc.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Github pull request and integrated public CI(Travis, Shippable ,
>>>>>> codecov) makes collaboration easy.
>>>>>> Currently, in patchwork, we can not assign a patch other than the set
>>>>>> of maintainers.
>>>>>> I think, it would help the review process if the more fine-grained
>>>>>> owner will be responsible for specific
>>>>>> patch set.
>>>>>
>>>>> The more fine-grain is achieved with Cc in mail.
>>>>> But I understand not everybody knows/wants/can configure correctly
>>>>> an email client. Emails are not easy for everybody, I agree.
>>>>>
>>>>> I use GitHub as well, and I really prefer the clarity of the mail threads.
>>>>> GitHub reviews tend to be line-focused, messy and not discussion-friendly.
>>>>> I think contribution quality would be worst if using GitHub.
>>>>
>>>> I have more experience with Gitlab than Github, but i really don't see
>>>> it that way.
>>>>
>>>> For one, reviewing in Gitlab makes it easier to see context in which
>>>> changes appear. I mean, obviously, you can download the patch, apply it,
>>>> and then do whatever you want with it in your editor/IDE, but it's just
>>>> so much faster to do it right in the browser. Reviewing things with
>>>> proper syntax highlighting and side-by-side diff with an option to see
>>>> more context really makes a huge difference and is that much faster.
>>>
>>> OK
>>>
>>>
>>>> I would also vehemently disagree with the "clarity" argument. There is
>>>> enforced minimum standard of clarity of discussion in a tool such as
>>>> Gitlab. I'm sure you noticed that some people top-post, some
>>>> bottom-post. Some will remove extraneous lines of patches while some
>>>> will leave on comment in a 10K line patch and leave the rest as is, in
>>>> quotes. Some people do weird quoting where they don't actually quote but
>>>> just copy text verbatim, making it hard to determine where the quote
>>>> starts. If the thread is long enough, you'd see the same text quoted
>>>> over and over and over. All of that is not a problem within a single
>>>> patch email, but it adds up to lots of wasted time on all sides.
>>>
>>> Yes
>>>
>>> My concern about clarity is the history of the discussion.
>>> When we post a new versions in GitHub, it's very hard to keep track
>>> of the history.
>>> As a maintainer, I need to see the history to understand what happened,
>>> what we are waiting for, and what should be merged.
>>
>> IMO, The complete history is available per pull request URL.
>> I think, Github also email notification mechanism those to prefer to see
>> comments in the email too.
>>
>> In addition to that, Bugzilla, patchwork, CI stuff all integrated into
>> one place.
>> I am quite impressed with vscode community collaboration.
>> https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/pulls
> 
> Out of curiosity, just checked the git history and I'm not that
> impressed. For example last commit on the master branch:
> 
> https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/commit/2a4cecf3f2f72346d06990feeb7446b3915d6148
> 
> Commit title: " Fix #98530 "
> Commit message empty, no explanation on what the patch is doing.
> 
> Then, let's check the the issue it is pointed to:
> https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/98530
> 
> Issue is created 15 minutes before the patch is being merged. All that
> done by the same contributor, without any review.
> 

Just because they do it wrong doesn't mean we can't do it right :) This 
says more about Microsoft's lack of process around VSCode than it does 
about Github the tool.

-- 
Thanks,
Anatoly