Hi Milan!

On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 10:05 AM Milan Crha <mc...@redhat.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 2016-06-06 at 09:49 -0500, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
> > A revert is not supposed to be "punishment" in any way... rather,
> > consider it as assistance to make sure GNOME stays buildable. :)
>
>         Hi,
> maybe it's not supposed to be, but it is in my eyes. I try my best to
> not break builds, I'm grateful when other folks let me know when the
> builds are broken for them. Neither jhbuild catches everything [1],
> which you seem to suggest. I broke build in general, not only in the
> jhbuild, in the not so distant past, which was a shame and it was all
> my fault. I'm sorry for that, though in that particular case the change
> on the evolution-data-server side was correct, only the evolution build
> broke, because it wasn't updated appropriately. The revert on the eds
> side would not make any sense. It was correct, as I said. (API changed
> in some way and I didn't realize that the evolution uses the API in a
> way which breaks it. Just my fault.)
>

I think that is the point of the try server, right?  You push it to the try
server and make sure that it builds correctly for everyone and then you'll
know whether something is broken or not before it get committed to master.

Perhaps, reverting might seem like over kill, but I think we need to have a
social contract to at least use the try server and make sure that it builds
there before pushing it to master.  After all, we all committed to a six
month release cycle and this doesn't add too much additional overhead, and
helps enables development across the stack without anybody getting stuck.
A lack of diligence on your part for instance costs time and headache
somewhere else.  Just another perspective on the issue.


> I do not fully understand why reverting in some random project (and
> making sort of hostile environment) is easier than the current state,
> when the same person "tags" what commit is supposed to be used in
> Continuous in the jhbuild. You still need the person, the person cannot
> be a monkey, it will think before doing anything (I mean, it's not a
> mechanical job where one rule fits each case).
>

Nope and Emmanuele does stipulate that we need someone to monitor the build
and act accordingly.  However, the rest of you have an obligation when that
person nags you about it to respond in a timely manner.


>
> I appreciate how Emmanuele and others (are there any others?) handle
> the situation right now. I do not want to add them more work, really
> not.
>

I think we all agree that there should be change, we just need to agree
what is the minimal set of things we can accomplish today and then iterate
there.  We just need to establish a place where we can at least start on a
path and break current status quo.


>
> Right, it's unrealistic in some cases to land all of that at one time.
> Side branches is a nice idea, but it won't work, because you do not
> have any influence on the other project maintainers usually, thus even
> a bugzilla requests can lurk there for a long time. Having a side
> branch only means that the maintainers whom do not follow particular
> mailing list will notice only later, rather than sooner.
>

Well that's when we ask the release team for help.  They are in my opinion
currently under utilized for this kind of thing.

In general, I really don't like the idea that we're all a set of fiefdoms
with no influence on each other.  We all here to move this platform
forward.  We should all be making sure that we support each other, because
that support helps GNOME and moves our purpose forward.  This shouldn't be
about my little piece of soil with the myopic view that this is all I care
about unless you are a contributor to the module.  If I come to you with a
build breakage issue then I expect a return courtesy because my request
comes with the intent that we want to improve things.


>
> There is a bug to make more structures in Camel GObject based [2], to
> be able to introspect it in a much easier way and so on. That change
> will not be only a simple API change, it'll break core Camel things,
> everything what uses it. If you open the [2], then I listed affected
> projects at the end of the comment #5. It counts 18 projects. Maybe
> there are more. I do not think I'd be able to coordinate the change in
> a side branch for all of them, I (we) will surely provide patches in
> the bugzilla around the time of the change landing, then it'll be up to
> the respective maintainers to pick or reject them. What will the
> Continuous do during this "broken period" is something I do not know. I
> only know that the change will be for good. Introspection support for
> the Mail part is good, I believe. Trying to revert such change in the
> eds would hurt very much, no doubt.
>

I would say that is a matter of negotiation.  If we are tolerating a full
break in the builds, then be it.  You schedule that time, and then give
people a chance to test the patches and push the changes all at once in a
coordinated way.  I mean, that's what release engineering and engineers
have been doing as part of a job function.  We could ask the release team
to provide that coordination.

These are just suggestions, trying to create simple processes using what we
have today.


>
> > Yeah, of course runtime bugs are problems, but not the problem we are
> > trying to solve here. :)
>
> Heh, true, though the runtime bugs are more important. I believe.
> I know, that's one reason why you want to have the jhbuild working, to
> make it easier for the contributors to test and develop. Which is a
> good thing for everyone.
>

Thank you for providing your perspective, it was very useful and helps move
this discussion forward.

sri


>         Bye,
>         Milan
>
> [1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=766540
> [2] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=764065
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