[webkit-dev] Yet another bug-less change hosed the tree.

[Eric Seidel]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 6:04 PM, Brent Fulgham <bfulgham at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 2:44 PM, Adam Barth <abarth at webkit.org> wrote:
>> On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 2:30 PM, Geoffrey Garen <ggaren at apple.com> wrote:
>>>> 2) Your patch can be vetted by the various bots that analyze patches
>>>> posted for review.
>>>
>>> True, if what you're really asking for is not just a bug report but also a "cooling off period" during which
>>> you wait for a result from the EWS bot, even if you get a review right away. You get greater value in the
>>> case of a bad patch, but also greater cost in the case of every patch.
>>
>> Yes, this way of doing things has more overhead for you personally but
>> saves overhead for everyone else in the project.  The question, as I
>> see it, is which of these quantities is larger.  The more people that
>> work on the project, the bigger the multiplier on the right.
>
> I'm not sure this is totally correct.  I'm sure more people than
> ggaren find the TPS cover sheet / cooling off period to be an added
> cost.  These added costs apply to *all* developers, whether they land
> bad patches or not.

I would like to debunk the "cooling off period myth".  There is no one
telling you (besides your reviewer) that you need to wait for all the
EWS bots to cycle.  They're there for informational (Warning, it's in
their name even) purposes only.  If your reviewer is happy to r+
before the bots have cycled, go for it. :)

> You seem to be advocating a system that imposes a (perhaps small) cost
> on every development 'transaction' as insurance against the (possibly
> high) cost of a build breakage.  I'm not sure the cost/benefit is
> clear here.

As Maciej states, webkit-patch upload is pretty quick (at least for
git users).  Quicker to me, than trying to send an email, or get
paste-bin review.  The other advantage for me (personally) of using
bugzilla for all my reviews is that I can mark them commit-queue=? and
then chuck them from my tree.  I understand that that doesn't
necessarily work for everyone as well, especially with the tree being
red enough as of late that the cq has been blocked for sometimes days
at a time.