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

[Jerin Jacob <jerinjacobk@gmail.com>]

On Mon, May 25, 2020 at 9:22 PM Maxime Coquelin
<maxime.coquelin@redhat.com> 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.

Yes. The merging rules, how much review is required, sanity test to
per check-in will be specific to the project requirements.
I can see zephyr RTOS project(I am following this project) will be
more close to the coding standard and other requirements.

https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/pulls


>
> 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.
>