Guix Days: Patch flow discussion

[Steve George]

Hi,

Our goal for the discussion:

        How do we double the number of patches that are *reviewed* and
        *applied* to Guix in the next six months?

Patch flow is a pipeline, to change it we could:

a. Increase the number of committers - more people to do the
work
b. Increase the efficiency of existing committers
c. Open the gates by decreasing the quality expected from patches

We essentially decided to focus our discussion on (b). We looked at
things that 'hinder' and 'help' patch review:


Hinders
========

- All our patch reviewers are volunteers doing it in their spare time.

- For a volunteer reviewing someone else's work is not very rewarding, 
most would prefer to use that precious time to scratch their own itch.

- Can feel like an Sisyphean task: no matter how many patches someone 
reviews there are more, exacerbated by the number of Guix packages.

- Sense of responsibility: the minute that a reviewer looks at the patch 
they are now stuck with it

- Repetitive and boring: often patches have minor issues, but it's the 
same sorts of issues time and time again.

- Risk of negative social interaction: having to tell someone that their 
patch is incorrect, or that their contribution cannot be used is 
difficult and draining. Some people felt it was better to say nothing, 
rather than to respond to a patch.


Helps
======

This led us to the focus on the fact that **reviewing and applying
patches can be different people**

We looked for ideas to create more reviewers, make reviewing easier and
more fun:


- Share in the work
--------------------

1. encourage new reviewers to step forward - making it more known that 
reviewing patches helps to get them applied. Anyone can review patches.

2. create directed 'how-to' documentation for reviewing and connect it 
to QA so that 'new reviewers' know what to do

3. create documentation about 'when' and 'how' it's appropriate to send 
a 'v2' version of a patch so that the QA system builds and accepts it. 
Sometimes, patches rot because non-committers don't want to be seen as 
'stealing' someone's work with a v2 patch - but making the small changes 
and resubmitting to QA is what is required.

4. Pay someone else to do it. Noted but out of scope.
5. Remove old packages overhead. Old untouched packages create mental 
overhead, and make the task of maintaining the repository in a good 
state more difficult. We could remove old 'untouched' packages and ones 
that no-longer compile. We have methods to hide and notify.


- Make it more fun
-------------------

1. do online sessions around reviews, some sprints or pairing - both 
social and a way to spread skills
2. find ways to recognise and appreciate reviewers - 'reviewer of the month'
3. make it a game - we could have a 'Guix London' vs 'Guix Paris' leader 
board for reviews. Make it a group goal 'can we beat januarys reviews 
number'
4. create some graphs / leaderboard so we know how many patches are 
being reviewed and we can recognise the contribution


- Automate it away
-------------------

1. Chris is continuing to try and automate away the boring work - 
general agreement in the group that QA has made a lot of difference.

2. general discussion about create a 'guix review' command (Nix has one) 
which would download a branch with the appropriate patch and build it 
locally. This is for instances where some adjustment is needed or to 
check a build. While this can be done today, it's a number of steps and 
quite involved.


Agreed Actions
==============

* [Chris]: continuing his work to improve QA automation. Implication was 
we'll need some reports / graphs - but these were not discussed in detail.

* [Futurile]: organise a **patch review online sessions**. To run every 
13 days (so it rotates through the week) - for 3 months to see if it has 
any traction. Co-ordinate with maintainers so that patches that are 
reviewed can be committed


Actions looking for someone - you?
====================================

* Carry forward the 'guix review' command idea

* Write an RFC and discuss the idea of removing older 'bit-rot' packages

* write 'how-to' documentation for reviews and when it's socially
acceptable to do a v2 patch. A checklist-like approach.


If you were in the discussion and I've misrepresented your point, or 
forgotten an important aspect please please reply and correct me.

Also, if you would like to help on any of the tasks please email back to 
the group so we can all co-ordinate.

Finally, thank-you to everyone who came along and put their shared brain 
power to the task - look forward to doing some patch reviews together 
online in the coming weeks!

Thanks,

Steve/Futurile