Re: merge reviews

2010-07-18 Thread Kevin Fenzi
On Sun, 18 Jul 2010 00:45:40 +0100
Richard Fearn richardfe...@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm a bit late joining this discussion, but did notice a couple of
 issues relating to review request links.
 
 One of the links on spot's Package Review Process page
 (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Package_Review_Process) doesn't work -
 the Review Tracker equivalent to Packages Currently Under Review (it
 links to REVIEW.html but that doesn't exist).

Odd. it works fine here. 

Which exact link? 
http://fedoraproject.org/PackageReviewStatus/REVIEW.html ?

Oh, I see... it's not updating. Right. 

 Perhaps someone with more power than me could get this REVIEW.html
 page working again :-)

I can take a look... tibbs is out of country. 

 I just made a couple of tweaks to the Join page:
 
 https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Join_the_package_collection_maintainersdiff=186902oldid=185877
 https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Join_the_package_collection_maintainersdiff=186903oldid=186902
 
 which makes the two sections more consistent. There still seems to be
 unnecessary duplication, though: they both say that you should check
 that the package is new. I was thinking of getting rid of this
 duplication - can I go ahead and make this (fairly minor) change?

Sounds fine to me. 

kevin



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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-18 Thread Richard Fearn
Hi,

 One of the links on spot's Package Review Process page
 (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Package_Review_Process) doesn't work -
 the Review Tracker equivalent to Packages Currently Under Review (it
 links to REVIEW.html but that doesn't exist).

 Odd. it works fine here.

 Which exact link?
 http://fedoraproject.org/PackageReviewStatus/REVIEW.html ?

That's the one.

 Oh, I see... it's not updating. Right.

I get a 404 when accessing it. The page says Sorry! We couldn't find
that file.

 I was thinking of getting rid of this
 duplication - can I go ahead and make this (fairly minor) change?

 Sounds fine to me.

OK, I'll do it.

Regards,

Rich
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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-18 Thread Richard Fearn
 I just made a couple of tweaks to the Join page:

 https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Join_the_package_collection_maintainersdiff=186902oldid=185877
 https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Join_the_package_collection_maintainersdiff=186903oldid=186902

 which makes the two sections more consistent. There still seems to be
 unnecessary duplication, though: they both say that you should check
 that the package is new. I was thinking of getting rid of this
 duplication - can I go ahead and make this (fairly minor) change?

 Sounds fine to me.

Now done:

https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Join_the_package_collection_maintainersdiff=187036oldid=186903

I also moved a couple of items up, as I think it makes sense to check
retired packages and forbidden items at the same time as checking
existing packages and those being reviewed.

Rich
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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-10 Thread Kevin Kofler
Michael Schwendt wrote:
 For each of the packages, assign its package owner(s) to the review
 ticket, let them perform the review themselves according to Fedora's
 Review Guidelines and when done, set the fedora-review flag to '?' and
 move the ticket to a final tracker. In other words, let the owners of
 these packages indicate that they have (re-)reviewed their own package.
 
 Fedora package maintainers must be aware of the packaging guidelines
 anyway when they touch their package spec files, and they also need
 to repeat several checks whenever they includes upgrades (e.g. checking
 for license changes or added code/libs with legal problems).

I think such a process would be generally useful, not just for merge reviews 
(but also for new packages).

There must be some group of packagers who we can trust to know the packaging 
guidelines (provenpackagers? sponsors?), if we can prove that we went 
through the review checklist for a package, why is it a problem if it was 
our own package we were reviewing?

Kevin Kofler

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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-10 Thread drago01
On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 7:19 PM, Kevin Kofler kevin.kof...@chello.at wrote:
 Michael Schwendt wrote:
 For each of the packages, assign its package owner(s) to the review
 ticket, let them perform the review themselves according to Fedora's
 Review Guidelines and when done, set the fedora-review flag to '?' and
 move the ticket to a final tracker. In other words, let the owners of
 these packages indicate that they have (re-)reviewed their own package.

 Fedora package maintainers must be aware of the packaging guidelines
 anyway when they touch their package spec files, and they also need
 to repeat several checks whenever they includes upgrades (e.g. checking
 for license changes or added code/libs with legal problems).

 I think such a process would be generally useful, not just for merge reviews
 (but also for new packages).

 There must be some group of packagers who we can trust to know the packaging
 guidelines (provenpackagers? sponsors?), if we can prove that we went
 through the review checklist for a package, why is it a problem if it was
 our own package we were reviewing?

Reviewing your own package is kind of pointless, the purpose of the
review is to have *someone else* to look at the package to spot
mistakes that
you might have made; being a provenpackager or a sponser does not
change the fact that you are a human and humans *do* make mistakes.

It is generally easier to spot mistakes in someone else's work than in your own.
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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-09 Thread Toshio Kuratomi
On Thu, Jul 08, 2010 at 05:23:40PM -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
 On Thu, 2010-07-08 at 14:28 -0600, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
  Greetings Fedora developers... 
 
  c) Just leave them open and let people pick pick pick away at them a
  few at a time? We might be done by Fedora20. Or perhaps not. 
 
 Does the existence of a bunch of open merge reviews cause any actual
 harm or trouble to anyone besides people who like to compile lists of
 open bugs and then stare at them glumly? =) If not, then option c) seems
 perfectly fine to me.

To me the problem with the merge reviews has always been when there's no
response from the package maintainer.  Having the package in the repository
and having a merge review open but not seeing any reviewer action is not
making anything worse than it already is.  But having a reviewer spend time
commenting on a merge review and not having the maintainer pick up the
changes is discouraging to the reviewers.

With that in mind, Kevin's option to kick out packages that don't have
a merge review completed has merit; all of a sudden it motivates the package
maintainers to pay attention to their merge reviews.  However, I think
that's a bit too chaotic for producing an orderly distro.

Perhaps instead, we should pick a list of packages each Fedora release and
kick them out unless their merge reviews are completed.  Since we're
starting almost at the Alpha for this cycle, perhaps we should either do
fewer packages or just leaf packages this time around.

A different sort of idea would be to select a list of packages that we want
to definitely get reviewed in time for the next release.  Then when
a reviewer steps up to take the packages, also assign a provenpackager.  If
the package maintainers aren't active on the merge review, the
provenpackager commits the changes to the packages.

-Toshio


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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-09 Thread Rahul Sundaram
 On 07/09/2010 03:41 AM, Jussi Lehtola wrote:

 I started doing merge reviews in late 2008, so far I've finished 24 of
 them and have 8 reviews currently still open. The biggest problem so far
 has been the lack of maintainer interest, often nothing has happened
 after my comments. For the major part a lot of BZ pings and mails to
 package-ow...@fedoraproject.org has done the trick, but some bugs have
 been awfully silent.

If you are a provenpackager, can't you just make the changes yourself
and close the review request? 

Rahul

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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-09 Thread Michael Schwendt
On Thu, 8 Jul 2010 14:28:13 -0600, Kevin wrote:

 So, here we are today with 242 still open merge reviews: 
 http://fedoraproject.org/PackageReviewStatus/MERGE.html
 (Plus a few that were closed when they shouldn't have been). 

Dumb question first: Where could I have found the URL of that page?

Several reviewers I know use the cached tracker page, which explicitly
does NOT include the old merge reviews:
http://fedoraproject.org/PackageReviewStatus/NEW.html

And that one is linked directly on the Package Review Process page:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Package_Review_Process#Tracking_of_Package_Requests


 So, what do we do? 

For each of the packages, assign its package owner(s) to the review ticket,
let them perform the review themselves according to Fedora's Review
Guidelines and when done, set the fedora-review flag to '?' and move the
ticket to a final tracker. In other words, let the owners of these
packages indicate that they have (re-)reviewed their own package.

Fedora package maintainers must be aware of the packaging guidelines
anyway when they touch their package spec files, and they also need
to repeat several checks whenever they includes upgrades (e.g. checking
for license changes or added code/libs with legal problems).
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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-09 Thread Jon Ciesla
On 07/09/2010 01:19 AM, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
 On Thu, Jul 08, 2010 at 05:23:40PM -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:

 On Thu, 2010-07-08 at 14:28 -0600, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
  
 Greetings Fedora developers...

  
 c) Just leave them open and let people pick pick pick away at them a
 few at a time? We might be done by Fedora20. Or perhaps not.

 Does the existence of a bunch of open merge reviews cause any actual
 harm or trouble to anyone besides people who like to compile lists of
 open bugs and then stare at them glumly? =) If not, then option c) seems
 perfectly fine to me.

  
 To me the problem with the merge reviews has always been when there's no
 response from the package maintainer.  Having the package in the repository
 and having a merge review open but not seeing any reviewer action is not
 making anything worse than it already is.  But having a reviewer spend time
 commenting on a merge review and not having the maintainer pick up the
 changes is discouraging to the reviewers.


That's been my biggest problem as well.  I currently have several open, 
many of which used to be F7blockers.  Some maintainers are great, 
responsive, etc.  Others. . .nothing.  Sometimes ownership will change, 
and they won't get CCd on the bug.  Other times, I'll go into pkgdb, 
find the new owner, and CC them.  Still nothing.  I think once I even 
had a maintainer un-CC themselves from the bug, without comment.  I'm a 
ProvenPackager, but I'm not sure what the call should be on whether we 
should commit the fixes ourselves.  In some cases, I'm not sure what the 
appropriate fix is, which is why I need maintainer input.

The above is why I stopped doing new merge reviews.  This is very 
important work (including the kernel review), but without buy-in from 
the maintainers it can't get done.  If I had a RH org chart I guess I 
could nag people's supervisors or something, but I really don't want to 
do that.  Is Unresponsive Maintainer a good way to go, possibly?

-J
 With that in mind, Kevin's option to kick out packages that don't have
 a merge review completed has merit; all of a sudden it motivates the package
 maintainers to pay attention to their merge reviews.  However, I think
 that's a bit too chaotic for producing an orderly distro.

 Perhaps instead, we should pick a list of packages each Fedora release and
 kick them out unless their merge reviews are completed.  Since we're
 starting almost at the Alpha for this cycle, perhaps we should either do
 fewer packages or just leaf packages this time around.

 A different sort of idea would be to select a list of packages that we want
 to definitely get reviewed in time for the next release.  Then when
 a reviewer steps up to take the packages, also assign a provenpackager.  If
 the package maintainers aren't active on the merge review, the
 provenpackager commits the changes to the packages.

 -Toshio



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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-09 Thread Kevin Fenzi
On Thu, 8 Jul 2010 19:47:41 -0400
Jeff Garzik jgar...@pobox.com wrote:

 Cute re-ordering of events, there.  No, after repeated experiences
 with seeking reviews, including this most recent one mentioned
 elsewhere on this list, and seeing others on this list repeating
 review requests, I was inspired to poke around to see why responses
 were so uneven.

IMHO, lack of reviewer manpower and some people dumping large numbers
of reviews into the queue without contributing reviews back. 

 Looking at the process with fresh eyes, starting from
 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageReviewProcess and moving to
 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/ReviewRequests one
 sees a chaotic mess of package reviews, both assigned and unassigned,
 not really moving forward at all.  Looking closely, you see a lot of
 packages that seem of worth, but that set is crowded by review
 requests for ancient packages like redhat-menus or kernel.

Yeah, as mentioned, try: 
http://fedoraproject.org/PackageReviewStatus/

instead. I think I have changed the wiki to point to this instead, but
if you spot it still listed, please change it. 

 In an ideal world, every package in fedora/devel would get a full
 package re-review prior to each release.  But with finite resources
 limiting that, it seemed to me that triaging long-dead bugs for
 long-merged packages was a reasonable and helpful thing for the Fedora
 project.  By all appearances, nobody else was bothering with these
 things after several years went by.

Yeah, I agree that ideally we would be able to re-review existing
packages, but sadly, the manpower is just not there currently. 
I don't think triaging merge reviews is a good idea though. They aren't
harming anyone, and slowly people are doing them, so why not let them
stay? 

 If people want these obviously unloved, ignored review requests -- not
 even an rpmlint or ping in many cases -- to stick around, that's fine
 with me.  I thought I was being helpful, but easy enough to leave
 things alone as well.

Thanks. I would like for us to come up with some kind of plan for
these, but nothing is decided yet. It's best IMHO to leave them open
for now. 

 My hail review was proceeding, and I wanted to make the process a bit
 easier for the -next- person wanting a review.  Apologies for the
 ruffled feathers.

No worries. 

 The process itself is intimidating, because the wikis demand that a
 prospective reviewer wade into a completely unorganized swamp (BZ URLs
 linked-to from above URLs), hundreds of review requests, with next to
 zero information about where one's review would be most helpful.  To
 an outsider, it must seem like quite a mess, with completely unknown
 chances for success/failure.

Yeah, we could look at organizing some more for sure. There was a
Package review sig that tried to start up at one point, but as far as
I know it never got anywhere. 

Perhaps things like using priority/severity would be nice... you could
then mark reviews that are needed for new features as high, or things
that are leaf nodes as low, etc. 

Anyhow, more things to try and work on. ;) 

kevin



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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-09 Thread Kevin Fenzi
On Fri, 9 Jul 2010 10:19:14 +0200
Michael Schwendt mschwe...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Thu, 8 Jul 2010 14:28:13 -0600, Kevin wrote:
 
  So, here we are today with 242 still open merge reviews: 
  http://fedoraproject.org/PackageReviewStatus/MERGE.html
  (Plus a few that were closed when they shouldn't have been). 
 
 Dumb question first: Where could I have found the URL of that page?
 
 Several reviewers I know use the cached tracker page, which explicitly
 does NOT include the old merge reviews:
 http://fedoraproject.org/PackageReviewStatus/NEW.html
 
 And that one is linked directly on the Package Review Process page:
 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Package_Review_Process#Tracking_of_Package_Requests

Yeah, perhaps that should link to
http://fedoraproject.org/PackageReviewStatus
?
Or both that and NEW?

 For each of the packages, assign its package owner(s) to the review
 ticket, let them perform the review themselves according to Fedora's
 Review Guidelines and when done, set the fedora-review flag to '?'
 and move the ticket to a final tracker. In other words, let the
 owners of these packages indicate that they have (re-)reviewed their
 own package.

Interesting idea. I fear we might get some maintainers who just want
the merge review to go away to just say reviewed it, everything is
great - fedora-review +
without really checking anything. 

 Fedora package maintainers must be aware of the packaging guidelines
 anyway when they touch their package spec files, and they also need
 to repeat several checks whenever they includes upgrades (e.g.
 checking for license changes or added code/libs with legal problems).

Indeed. Might be worthwhile to try it out... 

kevin


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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-09 Thread Jussi Lehtola
On Fri, 2010-07-09 at 12:55 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
 On 07/09/2010 03:41 AM, Jussi Lehtola wrote:
 
  I started doing merge reviews in late 2008, so far I've finished 24 of
  them and have 8 reviews currently still open. The biggest problem so far
  has been the lack of maintainer interest, often nothing has happened
  after my comments. For the major part a lot of BZ pings and mails to
  package-ow...@fedoraproject.org has done the trick, but some bugs have
  been awfully silent.
 
 If you are a provenpackager, can't you just make the changes yourself
 and close the review request? 

I asked about this a year(?) ago when I became sponsor. The consensus in
FESCo was back then that the reviewer making the changes would go
against the whole idea of reviewing, which involves two people (the
maintainer and the reviewer) going through the changes.

Having a provenpackager replacing the maintainer would be possible in
principle, but the merge review may in some cases involve rather drastic
changes that should be not made by other people than the maintainer.
Besides, it's the maintainer's work anyhow..
-- 
Jussi Lehtola
Fedora Project Contributor
jussileht...@fedoraproject.org

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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-09 Thread Bill Nottingham
Jeff Garzik (jgar...@pobox.com) said: 
 Cute re-ordering of events, there.  No, after repeated experiences
 with seeking reviews, including this most recent one mentioned
 elsewhere on this list, and seeing others on this list repeating
 review requests, I was inspired to poke around to see why responses
 were so uneven.

OK. I apologize for the insinuation.

 Looking at the process with fresh eyes, starting from
 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageReviewProcess and moving to
 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/ReviewRequests one
 sees a chaotic mess of package reviews, both assigned and unassigned,
 not really moving forward at all.  Looking closely, you see a lot of
 packages that seem of worth, but that set is crowded by review
 requests for ancient packages like redhat-menus or kernel.

I wonder if a better way to sort this is bottom-up... you could argue
that the older the review ticket, the 'less important' the package
is (as if it was a critical need, it would have been reviewed.)

 project.  By all appearances, nobody else was bothering with these
 things after several years went by.

Yes, that's a problem. We've had two sets of issues here:

1) No one does the merge reviews
2) Merge reviews that were done were never applied by the maintainers

#2 sort of fed #1. 

In any case, as trying to be part of the solution, I finished off one
merge review last night. I'll see if I can manage to do one a week
myself... if we could get some group of packagers (sponsors, maybe?)
to do the same, we might cut this down pretty quickly.

Bill
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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-08 Thread Till Maas
On Thu, Jul 08, 2010 at 02:28:13PM -0600, Kevin Fenzi wrote:

 c) Just leave them open and let people pick pick pick away at them a
 few at a time? We might be done by Fedora20. Or perhaps not. 

 f) Make a concerted push to clear the NEEDSPONSOR blocker. Get all
 those folks sponsored and ask them all to do a few merge reviews. 

I like these the most. A concerted push to clear NEEDSPONSOR would be
good anyhow. Btw. in case someone is looking to sponsor someone but did
not find someone who is ready, I would sponsor this one, if I currently
had more time to re-familiarize myself with the packaging guidelines:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=531544

 b) Try and make some kind of concerted effort to get the last 242 done? 
 We would need both people willing to review and maintainers willing to
 commit changes and get things completed. 

The problem with this one is that the maintainers are often not that
much into reviews. Maybe we can do this and allow provenpackagers to
commit the fixes and then have an action week to clear the NEEDSPONSOR
blocker and the merge reviews and e.g. another week later an action day
to allow provenpackagers to address all unhandled issues.

Regards
Till


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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-08 Thread Thomas Spura
Am Thu, 08 Jul 2010 22:51:57 +0200
schrieb Till Maas opensou...@till.name:

 On Thu, Jul 08, 2010 at 02:28:13PM -0600, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
 
  c) Just leave them open and let people pick pick pick away at them a
  few at a time? We might be done by Fedora20. Or perhaps not. 
 
  f) Make a concerted push to clear the NEEDSPONSOR blocker. Get all
  those folks sponsored and ask them all to do a few merge reviews. 
 
 I like these the most. A concerted push to clear NEEDSPONSOR would be
 good anyhow. Btw. in case someone is looking to sponsor someone but
 did not find someone who is ready, I would sponsor this one, if I
 currently had more time to re-familiarize myself with the packaging
 guidelines: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=531544
 
  b) Try and make some kind of concerted effort to get the last 242
  done? We would need both people willing to review and maintainers
  willing to commit changes and get things completed. 
 
 The problem with this one is that the maintainers are often not that
 much into reviews. Maybe we can do this and allow provenpackagers to
 commit the fixes and then have an action week to clear the NEEDSPONSOR
 blocker and the merge reviews and e.g. another week later an action
 day to allow provenpackagers to address all unhandled issues.

Big +1. Count me in with helping to review and fix all unhandled
issues...

Thomas
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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-08 Thread Jeff Garzik
On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 4:28 PM, Kevin Fenzi ke...@scrye.com wrote:
 So, here we are today with 242 still open merge reviews:
 http://fedoraproject.org/PackageReviewStatus/MERGE.html
 (Plus a few that were closed when they shouldn't have been).

 So, what do we do?

 Some possible options:

 a) Just close them all, any bugs in spec files in those packages can be
 filed as bugs against them.

/RH employee hat off
Fedora contributor hat on

After a large survey, it is readily apparent that many of these 242
have been untouched for -years-, for packages that have been merged
into Fedora and used happily for -years-.

Further hundreds of other reviews outside your 242 are listed as
assigned to a reviewer, but making no progress after multiple years.

These merges are crowding out new packages
that need merging, on bugzilla's list of packages that need a review.

As such, getting any package into Fedora requires navigating an
informal, ever-changing process, where the chief attributes for
success involve (a) knowing a Red Hat employee or (b) public,
sometimes repeated begging on fedora devel.

The results are highly uneven, and not necessarily directly related to
the technical attributes of benefit to the Fedora Project.

Closing a 3-year-old merge review of the kernel package is
reasonable bug triage.  It's not like the kernel package will get
un-merged.

The proper course of action for already-merged packages is to file
bugs against those packages.  We have an entire -team- of people
looking at kernel bugs, while this silly merge review: kernel sits,
ignored, for several years.

The current package review system is failing miserably at separating
wheat from chaff, is very chaotic, and non-deterministic.  Merge
review: kernel is pure noise.

 Jeff
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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-08 Thread Jussi Lehtola
On Thu, 2010-07-08 at 14:28 -0600, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
 So, here we are today with 242 still open merge reviews: 
 http://fedoraproject.org/PackageReviewStatus/MERGE.html
 (Plus a few that were closed when they shouldn't have been). 
 
 So, what do we do? 
 
 Some possible options:
 
 a) Just close them all, any bugs in spec files in those packages can be
 filed as bugs against them. 
 
 b) Try and make some kind of concerted effort to get the last 242 done? 
 We would need both people willing to review and maintainers willing to
 commit changes and get things completed. 

Just a few comments. First of all, option a) is IMHO out of the
question.

242 reviews is not that much. Maybe people have not been aware so far
that Merge Reviews exist and can be performed by anyone in the packagers
group. This discussion should raise awareness about the fact.

The work needed for the review depends, though, a lot on the nature of
the package. The further down the pile we go, the more work there is per
package: the spec files of say gcc, kernel or OpenOffice.org are rather
daunting.

I started doing merge reviews in late 2008, so far I've finished 24 of
them and have 8 reviews currently still open. The biggest problem so far
has been the lack of maintainer interest, often nothing has happened
after my comments. For the major part a lot of BZ pings and mails to
package-ow...@fedoraproject.org has done the trick, but some bugs have
been awfully silent.
-- 
Jussi Lehtola
Fedora Project Contributor
jussileht...@fedoraproject.org

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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-08 Thread Bill Nottingham
Jeff Garzik (jgar...@pobox.com) said: 
 After a large survey, it is readily apparent that many of these 242
 have been untouched for -years-, for packages that have been merged
 into Fedora and used happily for -years-.
 
 Further hundreds of other reviews outside your 242 are listed as
 assigned to a reviewer, but making no progress after multiple years.
 
 These merges are crowding out new packages
 that need merging, on bugzilla's list of packages that need a review.

That logically does not follow. If they're not being touched,
and not making progress, then there's obviously no review resources
being spent on them, which means they're not taking anything away from
the review resources for other new packages. (We're still having a
good number of new packages approved each week.)

 As such, getting any package into Fedora requires navigating an
 informal, ever-changing process, where the chief attributes for
 success involve (a) knowing a Red Hat employee or (b) public,
 sometimes repeated begging on fedora devel.

... how is it ever-changing? The review and sponsorship process has been
relatively static for a long time. Yes, sometimes you have to request
reviewers, or swap reviews, but that's been the case for quite a while.

 The proper course of action for already-merged packages is to file
 bugs against those packages.  We have an entire -team- of people
 looking at kernel bugs, while this silly merge review: kernel sits,
 ignored, for several years.

Except you'll need to have some sort of tracking of packages
which haven't yet been processed looking for these bugs, so people know
what packages to look at first. Which then ends up looking an awful lot
like the current merge review list.

 The current package review system is failing miserably at separating
 wheat from chaff, is very chaotic, and non-deterministic.  Merge
 review: kernel is pure noise.

I'd like not to assume the worst, but given your mass closing of some
review bugs, plus your arguments here about why, plus your request for
a review swap earlier, I'm having trouble reading this as anything other
than a transparent frustration at your package not getting reviewed
fast enough for your liking, with an unsaid assertion that it's part of
the 'wheat' above. 

Right now, we have a dearth of review resources. This leads to both
merge reviews having no activity, and new package reviews sometimes having
no activity. However, if a new package is important enough, someone's going
to have enough self-interest to pick up the review, or enough self-interest
as maintainer to swap reviews for someone else in the same boat. Frankly,
that's the sort of intrinsic motivation common to open source... assuming
differently, that there would or should be some sort of nebulous 'review
community' sitting there waiting to take on a bunch of new submissions from
the mountain seems awfully unrealistic.

Bill
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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-08 Thread Jeff Garzik
On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 6:26 PM, Bill Nottingham nott...@redhat.com wrote:
 I'd like not to assume the worst, but given your mass closing of some
 review bugs, plus your arguments here about why, plus your request for
 a review swap earlier, I'm having trouble reading this as anything other
 than a transparent frustration at your package not getting reviewed
 fast enough for your liking, with an unsaid assertion that it's part of
 the 'wheat' above.

Cute re-ordering of events, there.  No, after repeated experiences
with seeking reviews, including this most recent one mentioned
elsewhere on this list, and seeing others on this list repeating
review requests, I was inspired to poke around to see why responses
were so uneven.

Looking at the process with fresh eyes, starting from
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageReviewProcess and moving to
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/ReviewRequests one
sees a chaotic mess of package reviews, both assigned and unassigned,
not really moving forward at all.  Looking closely, you see a lot of
packages that seem of worth, but that set is crowded by review
requests for ancient packages like redhat-menus or kernel.

In an ideal world, every package in fedora/devel would get a full
package re-review prior to each release.  But with finite resources
limiting that, it seemed to me that triaging long-dead bugs for
long-merged packages was a reasonable and helpful thing for the Fedora
project.  By all appearances, nobody else was bothering with these
things after several years went by.

If people want these obviously unloved, ignored review requests -- not
even an rpmlint or ping in many cases -- to stick around, that's fine
with me.  I thought I was being helpful, but easy enough to leave
things alone as well.

My hail review was proceeding, and I wanted to make the process a bit
easier for the -next- person wanting a review.  Apologies for the
ruffled feathers.

The process itself is intimidating, because the wikis demand that a
prospective reviewer wade into a completely unorganized swamp (BZ URLs
linked-to from above URLs), hundreds of review requests, with next to
zero information about where one's review would be most helpful.  To
an outsider, it must seem like quite a mess, with completely unknown
chances for success/failure.

 Jeff
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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-08 Thread Adam Williamson
On Thu, 2010-07-08 at 14:28 -0600, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
 Greetings Fedora developers... 

 c) Just leave them open and let people pick pick pick away at them a
 few at a time? We might be done by Fedora20. Or perhaps not. 

Does the existence of a bunch of open merge reviews cause any actual
harm or trouble to anyone besides people who like to compile lists of
open bugs and then stare at them glumly? =) If not, then option c) seems
perfectly fine to me.
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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-08 Thread Kevin Fenzi
On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:29:42 -0400
Jeff Garzik jgar...@pobox.com wrote:

 On 07/08/2010 08:23 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
  On Thu, 2010-07-08 at 14:28 -0600, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
  Greetings Fedora developers...
 
  c) Just leave them open and let people pick pick pick away at them
  a few at a time? We might be done by Fedora20. Or perhaps not.
 
  Does the existence of a bunch of open merge reviews cause any actual
  harm or trouble to anyone besides people who like to compile lists
  of open bugs and then stare at them glumly? =) If not, then option
  c) seems perfectly fine to me.
 
 If you're looking for a package to review (perhaps for a review swap 
 :)), Fedora actively directs you to exact those sorts of long lists
 of open bugs:
 
 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/ReviewRequests

Wow. What links to that? 

You should really be using: 

http://fedoraproject.org/PackageReviewStatus/

Where they are seperated out and in nice cached lists. 

kevin


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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-08 Thread Adam Williamson
On Thu, 2010-07-08 at 18:36 -0600, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
 On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:29:42 -0400
 Jeff Garzik jgar...@pobox.com wrote:
 
  On 07/08/2010 08:23 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
   On Thu, 2010-07-08 at 14:28 -0600, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
   Greetings Fedora developers...
  
   c) Just leave them open and let people pick pick pick away at them
   a few at a time? We might be done by Fedora20. Or perhaps not.
  
   Does the existence of a bunch of open merge reviews cause any actual
   harm or trouble to anyone besides people who like to compile lists
   of open bugs and then stare at them glumly? =) If not, then option
   c) seems perfectly fine to me.
  
  If you're looking for a package to review (perhaps for a review swap 
  :)), Fedora actively directs you to exact those sorts of long lists
  of open bugs:
  
  https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/ReviewRequests
 
 Wow. What links to that? 

Thank the magic of mediawiki!

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/PackageMaintainers/ReviewRequests

seems several important pages do. So perhaps they should be updated to
use the link below..

 You should really be using: 
 
 http://fedoraproject.org/PackageReviewStatus/
 
 Where they are seperated out and in nice cached lists. 
 
 kevin
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Re: merge reviews

2010-07-08 Thread Kevin Fenzi
On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 17:59:44 -0700
Adam Williamson awill...@redhat.com wrote:

 
 Thank the magic of mediawiki!
 
 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/PackageMaintainers/ReviewRequests
 
 seems several important pages do. So perhaps they should be updated to
 use the link below..

2 of them are done. I'm not sure on the ru one. 

Feel free to adjust further. 

kevin


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