[bug#59513] [PATCH v2] doc: contributing: Tweak the Commit Policy.

[Ludovic Courtès]

Howdy,

Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant@debian.org> skribis:

> On 2022-12-08, Christopher Baines wrote:
>> Only suggest waiting one week for review for simpler changes, wait two weeks
>> for more significant changes.
> ...
>> +Changes should be posted to @email{guix-patches@@gnu.org}.  This mailing
>> +list fills the patch-tracking database (@pxref{Tracking Bugs and
>> +Patches}).  It also allows patches to be picked up and tested by the
>> +quality assurance tooling; the result of that testing eventually shows
>> +up on the dashboard at
>> +@indicateurl{https://qa.guix.gnu.org/issue/@var{number}}, where
>> +@var{number} is the number assigned by the issue tracker.  Leave time
>> +for a review, without committing anything (@pxref{Submitting Patches}).
>> +If you didn’t receive any reply after one week (two weeks for more
>> +significant changes), and if you're confident, it's OK to commit.
>
> My one concern here for things that I tend to work on is
> diffoscope... it has such a large dependency graph(?) because it
> supports so many file formats, it pulls in quite a lot for the test
> suites...
>
> In a week or two of changes between submission and being able to push to
> master, I'd worry that you could end up with a diffoscope that wouldn't
> build because of changes to one of it's (native-)inputs or whatnot
> because of changes to master in the previous week...

I suppose there’s always this risk.  Ideally, qa.guix would either
rebuild things periodically (rebasing them) or could be told to.

> That said, overall, I think sending everything through guix-patches is a
> good change, even if my lazier self pouts a little at having to deal
> with more process for seemingly simple things. :)

Right, I can sympathize.  :-)  I’ve done my share of direct pushes for
“simple thing”, but I think there’s now evidence that sometimes simple
things aren’t that simple.

Waiting for a green flag from qa.guix and/or from fellow hackers might
seem annoying at first, but the gains in terms of peace of mind, smooth
collaboration, and overall stability are worth it.

Ludo’.