From: Mike McCormack [mailto:mike@codeweavers.com]
Seems like that is a system that doesn't scale well at all, as it requires Alexandre to specifically respond to each and every patch.
No, it doesn't require that. It requires *someone* to respond, that could be a fellow developer on wine-devel. A comment added via the web interface or a message about the patch on wine-devel would set the status to RFC, meaning the patch wouldn't show up in Alexandres list (or with a very low priority). It would be the responsibility of the author to set the status back to New if he thinks that's appropriate. Sorry if that wasn't clear from the message you replied to, that message was explicitly aimed at the work Alexandre does, there's more to the system than just that.
For the automatic status update to work, we would need to make an automatic connection between wine-devel messages and the patch, could be done using the In-Reply-To header or making sure each message sent out on wine-patches has a unique ID in its subject, a reply to that message would (in most email clients) copy the subject including the unique ID.
In the end, when the number of developers grows, the number of reviewers grows too (every developer is a potential reviewer). Seems to scale pretty well actually.
It also seems like it encourages patch submitters to not polish their patches themselves and just submit a higher volume of low quality patches for Alexandre to review, since the onus will then be on him to respond.
First of all, I don't see the encouragement and secondly, how does the current system prevent that?
The current system, which leaves the responsibility for the patch with the submitter both scales better, and encourages patch submitters to think about their patches more.
I'm not sure why you think responsibility for the patch would shift. It would still be the authors responsibility to write acceptable code. The only thing that would change is that the author gets feedback at the earliest possible moment, be it from the bot, peer review or Alexandre.
We should encourage more people to participate in the patch review process, so that we have more reviewers and a more scalable process.
Absolutely. The proposed system doesn't change the review process, it allows peer review too. It just acts as a kind of safety net. Authority and responsibility should go hand-in-hand. I hope it's clear that I don't have a problem with Alexandre having the authority to make the final decision on whether a patch goes in or not, I just believe that with that authority comes the responsibility to inform the author if a patch isn't acceptable in it's current form. Hopefully a fellow developer has already reviewed the patch and told the author something is wrong but in the end we as developers are not psychic and simply cannot know what Alexandre thinks about a patch.
btw. Is there any reason that you can't request a review of your patches, or report the problem that you're trying to fix in bugzilla, as I suggested elsewhere?
How would that improve Alexandres productivity? As pointed out by Troy, it just means he has to look at a patch twice before sending a reply. Not to mention the time it costs the author. Shouldn't we be looking at the productivity of everyone involved in Wine development and not just at Alexandres productivity (although I acknowledge his special position)? I'm a bit surprised (and, to be honest, also a little bit annoyed) about the low value you seem to place on the time contributed by the developers.
Ge van Geldorp.