[asterisk-dev] Reviewboard Usage Guidelines

[Russell Bryant]

On Apr 9, 2009, at 2:22 PM, Olle E. Johansson wrote:

> While I see it as a good step forward, you also have to consider that
> you make life more and more difficult for us non-employed-by-digium
> developers that does not have Asterisk development as our primary
> task, but still wants to contribute.

You're right that this is additional work in the patch development to  
commit process.  However, I strongly believe that finding bugs before  
they make it into Asterisk saves us much more time than we spend in  
the long run.

>
> We have way too many open current branches to commit patches to and
> manage. Solving a simple issue takes a lot of administration time, so
> I feel quite often that I rather not do it because I don't have time.
> And in some parts, the code is very different in various branches.

Your point is taken.  Maintaining multiple releases takes work.   
However, I think we should avoid letting the discussion about code  
review go off topic into discussion about release management.  I would  
be happy to discuss issues related to that in another thread, though.

> The more you raise the bar, the more work Digium has to do yourself
> and you'll get less assistance from the community. It's a delicate
> balance for the project management to consider.

I completely understand this point.  However, what I'm proposing here  
is simply that code should be reviewed by someone else before it goes  
in.  For the most part, we're already doing this.  I'm just suggesting  
it become the policy.

> Is there another way to manage quality? Or can you assign someone that
> takes our patches and new code submissions through the full process, a
> project administrator?


I'm not exactly sure what you're suggesting here.  What are you  
proposing is the job of the developer of some piece of code versus  
some other person(s) for getting the code taken to completion?

In the case of committers, I would expect that they take full  
responsibility for ensuring that their code makes it through the  
review process before being merged. Who else would do it?

--
Russell Bryant
Digium, Inc. | Senior Software Engineer, Open Source Team Lead
445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - USA
Check us out at: www.digium.com & www.asterisk.org