[webkit-dev] review queue crazy idea

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Jul 23, 2010, at 1:10 PM, Dirk Pranke wrote:

> I have been thinking along these lines as well. I'm not sure how
> relevant touching existing lines of code is versus just other people
> who have hacked on the file at all or who have hacked on other files
> in the same directory (i.e., you'd need to address new code and new
> files, too). I think some empirical testing and tweaking would be the
> way to evaluate this, though.

To find a reviewer, what you want to find is people who understand the relevant subsystems well, and perhaps also people who are good reviewers in general (have a high likelihood of spotting avoidable problems). Making lots of commits to (or touching lots of lines in) the same file or the same directory are at best proxies for that kind of information. They may be better proxies for that kind of information than self-identification, but that has yet to be demonstrated. While an algorithm is a good starting point, I think self-identification and/or peer identification can capture nuances that an algorithm will not.

I think the main problems with <http://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebKit%20Team> are that (a) people don't know to look there; and (b) people don't know or don't bother to update it. I don't think the accuracy of the information is a problem (other than possibly being out of date). I don't see how it is helpful to refer to this information as "bragging".

Regards,
Maciej